


Mark Jonson and the Seer's Gift

by Drakey



Series: Luke Restimen and The Cruelty of Fate [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bad Decisions, Beer, Butterbeer, Firewhiskey, Griselda Gripling's Grand Old Rum, HP: Epilogue Compliant, Homosexuality, Horcrux Malfunction, I am mean to my characters, Mourning, Original Character(s), Prophecy, Rum, Spiked eggnog, Teddy Should Probably Shut Up, Truly Horrible Nightmares, Vodka, red wine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-25
Updated: 2013-08-25
Packaged: 2017-12-24 14:29:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 57,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/941076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drakey/pseuds/Drakey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the horrific end of his second year at Hogwarts, Luke copes with the stress as well as he can. Unfortunately, Luke is thirteen years old, and coping isn't his strong suit.</p><p>Meanwhile, Mark seems to have developed a runaway prophetic gift.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Let Me In, You Old Fraud

Myrtle was innocent. 

This, above all, filled him, not quite with regret, but with...

_Bang_

"No, I don't bloody well know who you are." His father was irate. That was to be expected. One hardly greets one's murderer with unbridled joy. He stepped forwards, his wand raised up in front of him, and cracked open a slow, unhappy smile. 

"Of course not," he said. "You didn't want me. But I... I can use you." He didn't lecture. He didn't explain. Lecturing and explaining were for the villains in old dramas. He simply pointed his wand at his father's chest and snapped "Avada kedavra!"

_Bang_

Roger turned to his son and smiled. "We'll be there before too long, Luke. Some lemons for the tea, a bit of bread for sandwiches, and then on to--"

"Dad! Look out!"

The truck was already coming. He would remember it in dreams sometimes, barreling down on him like an angry dragon. Not the European kind, with big, overspreading wings, but the Chinese sort, racing along the road to consume his father. It came on in a sort of slow motion, as his father turned, and shouted something that he couldn't hear, and then the world flipped over and over and over and he was upside down, and his head was pinned so that he couldn't turn it, and his father said nothing for a long time, until he said, "Luke, close your eyes."

He didn't close

_Bang_

He died in the woods. 

_Bang Bang_

His mother was dead.

_Bang_

His mother was _dead._

_Bang_

His _mother_ was _dead._

_Bang_

Because he had killed her.

\-------------------

"Luke? Luke, are you awake? Please god, let that be you in there. Luke!"

Luke Restimen was curled up in the fetal position, his throat raw and aching, his head pounding, his body cold and prickled all over with isolated pains, but the memories were... they weren't gone. But they weren't flooding into him all at once, either. They were just... there.

"Professor Leiman?" His tongue felt awkward and different. For a moment he couldn't work out why, and then he thought _but I'm a child. That's bound to change it._

Luke sat up and blinked away the tears from his eyes. He still couldn't see. 

_I've always been a child, though. That was Voldemort. It wasn't me._

"Why can't I see? It's gone all cloudy."

"You've probably burst the blood vessels in your eyes. I've never heard anyone scream as hard as that in my life, and I've heard a lot of screaming. Hold still."

Abruptly, Luke's vision cleared. He looked around. More than a few robed figures lay on the ground around him, or, in some cases, lay at impossible angles on top of gravestones. He glanced over to his left, and then to his right. "Where's Mum?"

Professor Leiman frowned. "Now, Luke, you have to understand that I can only do so much. Hold still, Luke. " The old American leaned forward and snapped "Legilimens."

Luke tried to ignore the things he remembered in those awful few seconds while the potions professor rummaged around in his brain. There was a staccato series of bangs, and the psychic checkup ended. 

Professor Leiman didn't move. He remained kneeling in front of Luke, and looked over Luke's shoulder, calling out, "Took you long enough. What did you do, Potter, stop in for tea and crumpets with the Queen? I told you where to go, and I would have liked to have some backup."

The voice of Harry Potter came from behind Luke. "You seem to've managed just fine on your own, James. Can't say I approve entirely of the approach you took. I'd have liked some prisoners."

"In the army, they tell you to aim for center of mass," Professor Leiman said. "But I quit the army quite some time ago. I go for the head, because that's how you stop a wizard." He looked around, appraisingly. "Seems to work."

"Have you checked the boy?" Potter asked.

"Of course," Leiman said. "He's clean. Not that they didn't dirty up his mind a bit, but in order to take over, the fragment had to be both big enough and willing. I suspect it was neither."

"Where's my mother?" Luke asked.

His question made no echo in the graveyard, didn't bounce off the cold headstones into the night air. It vanished into silence, and more silence followed it. 

"Luke," Professor Leiman said, "Your mother is right behind me, but Luke, I couldn't get here in time. Do you remember what they made you do?"

"Oh." Luke stared at the ground. He felt like he wanted to throw up, but there was nothing there to throw up. He looked at his clothes. A trail of vomit stained the front of his Hogwarts sweater. "God." he said. "Is she really... is she?"

Professor Leiman nodded. "I'm afraid she's dead, Luke. This wasn't your fault. You were under the Imperius curse. They had to do that to make it happen. It wasn't you."

Luke felt tears welling up in his eyes. Some small, background part of his mind insisted that he was thirteen years old, he was too old to be bawling his eyes out, he would not cry, and he calmly told that part of his mind to suck on it and leaned forward into Professor Leiman's arms and began to sob inconsolably. 

"I'll take him to my house," Professor Leiman said.

"Right," Potter said. "We'll just clean up here. This is a, uh, a job well done, James."

"A job well done would have been five hours earlier and ended with forty or fifty arrests. This is a rescue. This is the war again. Just because you've killed the emperor doesn't mean you don't have to deal with his army."

Professor Leiman stood up, picking Luke up and shifting around. Luke heard some clicking noises, and a few shufflings that didn't sound like they were part of what would normally come from a man standing up. Professor Leiman nodded brusquely. "Just keep looking at my face, Luke. You don't need to see what's behind me."

This time, Luke took the advice. He kept looking at Professor Leiman's face. Luke wanted to stand on his own, but Leiman scooped him up, just as though the man had never even touched a cane, let alone relied on one for decades.

Leiman's arm shifted a bit, and Luke had the sensation of being squeezed through a letterbox, and then there was a smell of cinnamon and black tea and Luke was staring up at a white-painted ceiling, with the sort of uneven texturing that his young mind had always painted with fanciful figures of dragons and unicorns and wizards fighting magical duels, right up until the day an owl landed on his balcony with a letter telling him he was a wizard, the day it had all changed.

The day his mother had joked with him about how it was all impossible. Of course it was impossible.

If only it was impossible.

"James," a voice with a light Scottish accent said, a woman's voice. "Oh, dear, is he all right?"

"A bit beat up. They got through the ritual, but it didn't take. At least it's all or nothing. No getting Voldemort back after that."

A vaguely familiar face appeared in Luke's field of vision. It took him a moment to place the woman it belonged to, with her sharp features and nigh-grandmotherly wisdom, but then it clicked into place. 

Minerva McGonagall had been there after the sorting ceremony, when all the other students who had gotten that same letter, telling them they were witches and wizards, were put into the school house they would have while they were taught at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Luke had been sorted into Slytherin, and the sorting hat had remarked that it thought it had already sorted him, more than seven decades earlier.

It had thought he was a student from the same year, from the same house, as Lord Voldemort, the most powerful dark wizard the last hundred years had seen.

They had called in a whole slew of people to figure out if Luke had anything to do with Voldemort, and Minerva had been one of them.

But this was Professor Leiman's house. What was she doing here?

He tried to ask, but he found he couldn't speak. He could barely groan.

"Oh, thank god," Professor Leiman said. "He's losing consciousness. I thought that the energy loss would never hit him. Let's get him to--"

The rest of his words were lost.

\--------------------------------

Luke woke up in a big, soft bed with someone holding his hand. As a matter of fact, there was someone lying next to him. For a moment, he was too confused to even know where to begin thinking over what had happened, and it was all he could do to turn and look at who was there with him. 

Mark Jonson was Luke's boyfriend. A sweet, awkward Hufflepuff boy with almost-reddish brown hair and deep brown eyes, normally hidden behind spectacles, but for now, hidden behind his eyelids. His hand gripped Luke's under the blanket, and the rest of him was a very chaste foot or so away from Luke. The bed was one Luke didn't recognize, with a big down comforter that wasn't over him, and a scratchy old blanket that had big capital letters on it. Luke looked closer at the blanket. 

"US ARMY", it said. 

Luke was in Professor Leiman's house. He wasn't crusted with sweat, mud, and vomit, so someone must have cleaned him off. He was famished, but some fairly aggressive magic had been done to him, so that could mean almost anything. He couldn't recall dreaming about anything, so either his sleep hadn't been entirely natural, or he had had nightmares so utterly horrendous that his subconscious mind had blanked them from his memory. 

"Mark," Luke said.

His voice was practically gone. His throat hurt. Mark didn't stir. Luke squeezed his hand. That took a lot more effort than he thought it would. He must have been pretty drained by what they had done to him. 

Mark started to shift around a bit, coming up from sleep, not much, but enough that Luke could try again.

"Mark," he croaked in a hoarse whisper.

Mark's eyes opened. "Luke! You're awake!" He sat up on the bed, and Luke frowned. There was a big scab on Mark's forehead. 

"Is that from the train?" Luke said.

Mark gave him a puzzled look, and then reached up and touched the scab. "Oh, yeah, that. That's from the train. We were really lucky nobody got killed, but there's a lot of people in the hospital still. Teddy broke his arm. You should have seen, Violet was fussing all over him, and her with a big cut on her face."

Luke pulled feebly at Mark, and Mark leaned forward and laid his head on Luke's chest, which was nice, but wasn't exactly what Luke had in mind.

"No," he said. "I meant for you to kiss me."

Mark looked up and frowned. "But I've been here a couple of days, and I've hardly left your side, and I haven't brushed my teeth in a bit and..." he trailed off as he saw the look on Luke's face. "And you probably don't care about all that right now." He leaned over and planted a gentle kiss on Luke's lips. 

"Why can I barely move?" Luke asked after a few moment of silence.

"Professor Leiman says that's because of the magic that was done to you. It sort of skirts around killing you in order to try to bring Voldemort into control, only I guess he didn't want to be in control, or he wasn't powerful enough to take control."

Luke shook his head. It wasn't much of a gesture, but it was more than he had been managing. "He was crying. He hated it. I could feel what he was feeling for a minute while... while it was happening. I kept remembering things he'd done, because he was remembering them, and he hated them."

There was the sound of a door opening, and Minerva walked in. She smiled.

"I thought I heard voices from in here, and I'm not so old I've gone senile yet. All right, Mark, you've been cluttering up that bed long enough. You know where the shower is. Go and use it."

Mark turned and gave Luke one more kiss, then hopped off the bed and hurried away out the door. 

Minerva stepped forward. She was wearing a deep green robe today, a pleasant one that didn't have the stiff formality of a brand new garment. She looked very much at ease as she sat on the edge of the bed, as though it was her favored perching spot.

"And how are you today, Mister Restimen?" she asked.

"Terrible," Luke said. "As I imagine I will be for quite some time. Where's Professor Leiman?"

She sighed. "At this hour, James will be asleep in the guest bedroom, except that the shower is very near to it. Therefore, he will be in momentarily."

"Have you been here the whole time I've been out?" Luke said. 

"Four days," she said, "yes."

"Where have you slept if Professor Leiman had the guest bedroom?"

Minerva smiled. "I've caught catnaps," she said. "It's something I've become adept at."

"Very adept," Professor Leiman said, stepping into the room. He looked his usual self, and not at all as though he'd been asleep moments earlier. As he closed the door, Luke heard the sound of the shower starting up somewhere else in the house. 

Professor Leiman was Luke's favorite teacher at Hogwarts. Well on his way to eighty years old, he was a spry, dignified old man, never without his cane (it was actually a wand), always wearing a pinstriped suit, polished and precise, with a neatly trimmed beard and moustache, and a treasure trove of old stories from his days, if Luke had it right, as a spy. If what Luke had gathered of his rescue was at all correct, then James Leiman was still very much in practice. 

"Hello Luke," Leiman said. "I see Minnie has started arranging things. You have to be careful of that. If you let her, she'll start arranging everything for you, and then you'll wind up with tasteful bedspreads and a stocked fridge."

"I've never heard you complain about the refrigerator," Minerva said. 

"If I do, you'll keep stocking it, but you'll use things I don't like."

Luke couldn't help cracking a little grin at that. It was fleeting and tiny, but it happened, so of course, Professor Leiman noticed it. "Nice to see you smile," he said. He turned to Minerva. "You can go if you like, Minnie. Now that he's awake, he won't need to be watched constantly, and I know you've got your garden to tend."

"Oh, James," she said. "You're not trying to get rid of me, are you?"

"Hardly," Professor Leiman said. "If I could, you know I would keep you around all the time, but you're too attached to that old hovel of yours, and I like it here."

Minerva smiled. "You only like it here because you like to be cantankerous about my home," she said as she stood up. She started towards the door. "I would like to be able to use conditioner in my hair again, though, and since you utterly refuse to keep any in your shower whatsoever, I shall take my leave of you once again." The old woman reached the door and turned to give Luke a little smile. "It will get better, I promise." She closed the door, and Luke sighed.

The sound of the shower was all there was for a while. Finally, Luke said, "why am I still here?"

"Instead of at the hospital, you mean?" Professor Leiman said. "You're still here because I'm the most potent, paranoid cuss they could find without bringing Alastor Moody back from the dead. You were attacked by the Death Eaters, Luke. That's who those people were. And now that their attempt has failed, I'd give even odds they want to kill you." He leaned against the wall and let the distant sussurration of the shower fill the silence again. "They were trying to bring Voldemort back. They failed." 

"They wanted Voldemort to lead them again?"

Leiman nodded. "If they want to eliminate you now that they've failed, they'll have to get through me first. And I can make that completely impossible."

"All right," Luke said. 

"Now," Professor Leiman said. "I imagine that after four days, you're quite hungry. If there's anything you'd like me to get from your apartment, I can retrieve it for you after I get you something to eat."

Luke thought for a moment and then said, "Fortinbras."

Leiman raised an eyebrow. "The dog from A Wrinkle in Time is a bit outside my grasp, but if you're referring to the kitten that was cowering under your mother's bed, he's sleeping on the couch at the moment."

Luke nodded. "Good. I can't think of anything else right now. I really am very hungry though."

\---------------------------

The next few days consisted of almost pure recovery. Mark's parents, Linda and Rutherford, came by to see Luke a couple of times, and took Mark back home or brought him back to stay with Luke. Luke made good time on his recovery, which, unfortunately, meant that he had a lot of time to think, which was more than a bit depressing. At the end of his fifth day of recovery, Luke was finally able to walk, and the first thing he did was to draw a bath. By day seven, he was getting around about as well as he had before the attack, and Fortinbras had taken to following him around the house.

And what a house it was. 

Professor Leiman's home was warm and inviting, and had clearly seen at touch or two of redecorating at the hands of Minerva McGonagall. The walls were painted in rich, warm tones, and though the house wasn't huge, there was no part of it that wasn't some cross between comfortable and sophisticated. Even the bathrooms were comfortable, but Luke's favorite room was the study. 

It was a small room with a desk and liberal lining of bookshelves. When Mark was over, Luke liked to sit with him on the floor, leaning up against the desk, with Fortinbras curled up on one or the other of their laps, or sometimes both at once, if the kitten was feeling in a stretching-out sort of mood. 

In the study, Luke could pick a book from the wall and read, and lose himself in it and not have to think about what had happened to him. 

Both his parents dead, both times right in front of him, both times in circumstances that made it so he couldn't attend their funerals; for his father, he'd been in the hospital with two broken legs, and quite a few other internal injuries to boot. For his mother, he'd been unconscious when they buried her. He knew he would have to face it eventually, but for the time being, he was content with reading in Professor Leiman's study, everything from crime novels to books about sharpshooting practices, potions manuals to Timothy Zahn's Star Wars trilogy (which Luke had been surprised to find, and even more surprised to find was heavily dogeared). 

After a couple of weeks, visitors other than Mark were allowed.

Teddy came first. Luke rarely saw him the way he actually looked. Teddy was a metamorphmagus, able to change his appearance at will, and also probably Luke's best friend in the whole world. Luke and Mark were sitting in the study together, trying to make sense of a fifty-year-old map of Albania, when the door opened and Teddy walked in. His appearance was completely natural, no bizarre hair colors or odd facial features.

"So, is this what you two have been up to while I've been worrying about you? Starting up your own little art appreciation society?"

Mark smiled. "Come on in, Teddy." He picked up Fortinbras. "This is Fortinbras."

"I know," Teddy said. "I was there when my gran bought him for... you know."

"Sit down, Teddy," Luke said. "And don't try to avoid talking about my mum, that'll only make it worse."

Teddy sat down on the floor across from them and Fortinbras padded over to jump up into his lap. 

Luke looked at the kitten, grimaced, and said, "disloyal little bastard."

Fortinbras mewled at him, and Teddy patted him on the head.

"Teddy," Luke said, "It's weird seeing you with red hair. Will you please, for my sake, turn it blue or something?"

Teddy shrugged and his hair went rainbow-patterned. "Better?"

Luke nodded. "Thanks. So I hear you broke your arm?"

Teddy nodded. "It wasn't fun. Marissa passed out when she saw." He shrugged and his hair went seafoam green. "Oh, hey, you know what I can do that drives Violet crazy?"

Luke raised an eyebrow at him. "I imagine you're going to demonstrate."

Teddy grinned and grew a spectacular set of breasts. Mark started giggling.

"They're lovely, Teddy," Mark said. 

"Our little girl is really growing up, isn't he, Mark?" Luke said.

Teddy retracted the breasts and patted Fortinbras on the head. "Marissa doesn't seem very happy about it," he said speculatively. "She said it was predictable. I don't think she liked when I kept making them different sizes."

Luke found himself picturing Teddy with one magnificent, majestic, sextuple-something-cup breast, one tiny, insignificant little nothing-breast, and (because it was the sort of thing Teddy would do) a long, flowing pink beard. He started laughing. 

Mark looked over at him. "You're laughing!"

"It was funny!"

Teddy grinned. "That's what I told Marissa!"

Mark and Luke looked over at Teddy. "Shut up, Teddy," Mark said. "He hasn't laughed since he woke up."

\--------------------------

Violet made her visit the next day, when Mark was off at home. If Teddy was Luke's best friend, then Violet was basically a sister to Luke. In the two years they'd known each other, they'd grown closer than Luke ever thought he would get to a girl without dating her, and somehow, he just didn't want that from her. Violet was Violet, after all. She was pretty, with the same black hair and sharp features as her mother, and the same scalpel wit as her grandfather, in whose house Luke was currently residing. 

Violet was the daughter of Professor Shelly Leiman, Professor Leiman's daughter-in-law. Up until the attack on the Hogwarts Express, Luke had been sure that the most exciting thing that would happen in his second year at Hogwarts would be Violet's suddenly developing a tendency to burst into flames. She, like her father, was a firestarter, and apparently a very powerful one. She'd been unable to control it for a while, and had had to be taken away for special training. 

Of course, firestarters were rare, and if her trainers had gotten their way about it, she would never have told her friends about her ability. It would have remained a mystery to them, and Luke would still be wondering about it.

Violet was also Teddy's girlfriend, and had eventually gotten Luke to confess to having seen Teddy's breast routine.

"It's just so immature," she said. "He honks them. Just grabs ahold of them and goes 'honk honk' like he thinks it's funny."

Luke shrugged and sipped at his cup of tea. "It sort of is," he said.

Violet gave him a dirty look. "Men."

"As long as he hasn't turned himself into a girl while you were snogging, I don't see how there's too much you can complain about."

Violet drained her cup. "It sort of depends on if he turns into a pretty girl, I suppose. He says he wants to get used to the idea."

One of Luke's eyebrows began searching for top-floor apartments. "Has he done that?"

"Not yet," Violet said. "Honestly, I don't know if he ever will, but as long as it's him underneath it all, I don't really see a problem with it. It'll probably make things easier if we ever get to... you know... the bedroom stage. I mean, if he knows all the, ah, relevant anatomy." She blushed. "You probably didn't really want to know that."

Luke grinned. "He's the one that thought of that, isn't he? That's a really Ravenclaw way to look at it."

Violet nodded. "Yeah. He said that--" she was cut off by a popping noise, and she frowned. "Mum must be here. I've got to go." She stood up. "I know you're emptying out your apartment tonight. Try to be all right, okay?" Violet hugged him, squeezing hard on him. Luke hugged her back just as tightly, and she patted his back.

"I'll see you later, Violet," Luke said.

\-----------------------------

Luke was in tears by the time he and Professor Leiman got everything moved into boxes, waiting for his careful consideration at some other time. His mother had left a half-finished jigsaw puzzle on the coffee table, one of the ones from Weasley's Wizard Wheezes that changed its picture every once in a while. He remembered her being very excited about getting it, because all of the pictures on it were of Albus Dumbledore, and she had loved hearing about him. 

Luke had insisted upon carefully packing everything in his mother's room into boxes himself, and had spent most of the time at the apartment at that task, and the remaining time carelessly packing his own belongings. Professor Leiman had let him go about his self-assigned tasks while he cleared out the rest of the apartment. The refrigerator had come with the apartment, but the dishwasher had belonged to Luke and his mother, and Luke decided that that, at least, could be sold, along with most of the furniture. 

Wherever he wound up living, he would need a bed, so that was sent into storage, along with Anna Lee Restimen's favorite chair, because, as Professor Leiman had said, Luke should always have something around to remember her by.

Professor Leiman took Luke back to his house, and Fortinbras greeted him by running up and rubbing against Luke's legs. Luke couldn't muster the caring to pet the kitten, and Professor Leiman seemed to take note of that. 

"Come on, Luke," he said. Luke followed the professor into the kitchen, and Professor Leiman pointed to the table. "Sit." Luke sat.

Professor Leiman walked over to the cabinet and started pulling down bottles. "You did well today, Luke. You did very well. I don't know if I would have managed so well under your circumstances." He pulled down a pair of glasses and started pouring things into them in careful measures and slapdash splashes. "I haven't mixed one of these in... oh, more than thirty years, now." He pulled a spoon out of the silverware drawer mixed up the drinks he'd made, then set one down in front of Luke and put the other down in front of a chair, which he sat in.

Luke sipped the drink automatically. It was bitter and undeniably strong. He looked up at Professor Leiman. 

"Go on," Leiman said. "If ever there was someone in need of a drink, it's you." He pulled off his suit jacket, loosened his tie, and draped both over the back of his chair. He wore a white shirt underneath the jacket. "And for right now, I think I can be just James. If that doesn't make you uncomfortable."

Luke thought it over for a moment. Fortinbras jumped up into his lap from under the table. 

Luke lifted his glass towards James, and James toasted him silently, and they both sipped their drinks. 

After a while, when the heat of the alcohol was rising into his cheeks, Luke said, "So James. Where were you last summer, anyways? I mean, now it won't earn me any house points to know? It has to've been someplace dry, right? You can't have been--"

"I spent the summer under the lake with the merpeople. They're really very friendly." At Luke's raised eyebrow, James laughed. "I came in at the beginning of the year straight from the lake. I was sopping wet and covered in algae. Where did you think I had gone?"

"We all thought you must have gone to someplace hot and dry, and you were trying to throw us off with the soaked routine," Luke said. 

James grinned over his glass. "Sometimes, you have to hide in plain sight."

Luke shook his head. "You're devious, James."

James raised his glass. "To Slytherin."

Luke clinked his glass together with James's, and they kept drinking. By the bottom of his glass, Luke's head felt like it was taking a few moments to move whenever he wanted to move it, and he was sort of detachedly happy. James got up, went to the refrigerator, and got out a pair of beers. These, he poured into pint glasses and added something to. He put the drink down on the table, and then he put the beer bottle down next to it. Luke tried the beer first. It reminded him of tea, in some ways, but in a lot of very important ways, it was nothing like tea at all. He drained the little that was in the bottle and then turned his attention to the glass.

He started chuckling.

"What's so funny?" James said. 

"'Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea,'" Luke quoted. 

James grinned. "Violet was very into those books for a while," he said. "I have to admit a certain fondness for that passage as well. There's something very British about it."  
Luke sipped his drink, and smiled. It was good, the bitterness of the beer alleviated by something else, something that Luke could tell had a hell of a kick to it on its own. He drank a bit more, eagerly, and patted Fortinbras.

"So why Mark, anyways?" James asked. 

Luke shrugged. "He's one of my best friends, and once he brought it up, it was actually a pretty appealing idea." He ran his finger across the condensation ring his drink left on the table. "I love him anyways, and he's a lot sweeter than the other possibility."

James grimaced. "Marissa, I take it?"

Luke nodded. "She doesn't trust me." He took a long swallow of his drink. "Teddy got it right, you know. It was excusable just after Potter told everyone about how I carry around a bit of Tom Riddle's soul, but last year, when they were framing me for attacking the seekers on the other quidditch teams, Marissa should have known better. She should have bloody known better." He followed that up with another swallow and put the drink back down for a minute. 

Fortinbras jumped off his lap and trotted off to go lie down somewhere, and Luke picked his drink back up. 

"You know," James said, "My wife could be like that sometimes. We divorced... oh, twelve, thirteen years ago. We were only still together for Andrew, and with him off in the world, there wasn't much point to it anymore at all."

Luke picked his drink back up and drained away a bit more of it. He sat there, contemplating, for a few minutes, sipping, or more-than-sipping, and before too long, his glass was empty. He peered mournfully into it, then reached down to pet Fortinbras.

Fortinbras wasn't there. Luke thought that over for a moment and then said, "I think, one more."

James nodded and got up. This time, he fixed a cup of tea for each of them, and poured a generous helping of rum into each. Luke took his and smiled at the taste. Far sharper than plain tea, and it would probably even be good cold. 

They drank in silence this time, until James raised his cup and said, "To Anna Lee Restimen. May she rest in peace."

Luke blinked back a few tears and toasted his mother's memory with the last of his spiked tea, then he got up and took a few moments to figure out how steady he was on his feet. 

The answer to that question was "not terribly", but he managed to get to the guest bedroom, and he got to the bed in the guest bedroom, and he thought that the room was spinning in the absolute most pleasant way a room had ever spun around him, not urgent or insistent, not as though he might fall off of the bed at any moment. It simply spun, lazily, reminding him that he had drunk and was drunk, and he drifted off to sleep, and for once, he didn't dream about happy feelings that told him to kill his mother.

\-------------------------

There was a glass of water on the nightstand when Luke woke up. He drank it on the way into the kitchen, following his nose to the smell of bacon. 

"How are you today?" Professor Leiman said. 

Luke smiled. Professor Leiman--and there was no mistaking that the informality of the night before was at an end--was the only person he had ever known to make bacon in a suit, although he at least removed the jacket. "I'm fine," he said. "Have to pee like a thestral that's just seen his reflection, though. I just came in to drop this off." He set his empty glass down on the table and hurried to the bathroom. He discovered that he did have a touch of a headache if he looked at the wrong bright light, but all told, he felt he'd gotten off fairly lightly for his first experience of alcohol, and he came back to the kitchen fairly happy. Fortinbras was on the table, and Luke picked the kitten up and put him on the floor. 

"No, Fort. Cats off the table."

Professor Leiman grunted out a thanks and slid some bacon onto a plate, then set it down in front of Luke. There were scrambled eggs as well, and a couple pieces of toast. "I heard you stirring," Professor Leiman explained. "I thought I might as well get your breakfast on before you woke up, if I had warning."

"Thanks," Luke said, and he dug in.

Professor Leiman picked his suit jacket up off the chair he had tossed it over. As usual, he had somehow managed to completely avoid getting any bacon grease on his nice white shirt. He got himself presentable and adjusted his tie fussily a couple of times. "Minerva is coming by later today. I'm leaving a couple of pono here for you, and Shelly should be here any minute. Don't talk her into leaving you alone in the bedroom with Mark. His mother would kill me."

"No Violet?" Luke said.

Professor Leiman shook his head, adjusted his tie again, and picked up his cane to aim it at the tie, which began adjusting itself. "Violet is off with her father today. He's training her how to use her gift."

"Oh," Luke said. "I suppose she'll be throwing fire around like a juggler by the time school starts."

"She'd better not," Leiman said. "It takes years to learn that kind of fine control. She'll be lucky if she can manage a passable torch."

"Was anyone else in your family a firestarter?" Luke asked. 

Professor Leiman let his cane drop, apparently satisfied with his tie. "My great-great-great-grandfather. And possibly a few cousins. Firestarters are one in a hundred thousand. With as few wizards and witches as there are in the world, and all firestarters being able to trace their lines back to some pureblood family or another, I'd be surprised if there are more than one or two hundred of them. Violet and Andrew being father and daughter and both firestarters is so unusual, Andrew tells me half of them think it must be a portent of some kind."

Luke chuckled at that, and then the front door opened, and Professor Shelly called out "What a wonderful smell you've discovered!"

"One thing's for sure," Professor Leiman called back. "We're all gonna be a lot thinner."

"Luke!"

Luke looked up. Mark was running into the kitchen. This, he decided, was going to be a good day.

Mark embraced Luke and kissed him soundly on the cheek. "Hello, Mark," Luke said. "I appreciate the enthusiasm, but what's it for?"

Professor Shelly walked into the room, sharp-faced and black-haired, and Luke waved at her.

"I just missed you yesterday, that's all," Mark said. "How was Violet?"

"She was good," Luke said. He peered out of the corner of his eye at the two professors as they conferred in hushed tones. "If you're wondering about cleaning out the apartment... well, to be honest, I'd rather not talk about it. It was unpleasant."

Mark nodded. "All right," he said. He sat down and swiped a slice of Luke's bacon. "Did Professor Leiman cook this?" Luke nodded, and Mark shrugged. "It's good."

Professor Leiman left after about an hour, and Professor Shelly broke out a deck of cards and began building an elaborate house of cards, directing the cards from place to place with her wand. Luke and Mark watched for a while, sitting on the floor in front of the sofa, Mark with his legs out, and Luke leaning back on him, cross-legged on the floor as Professor Shelly's little structure took shape, first on the coffee table, and then expanding out via a bridge to the top of the TV stand. That was one thing Luke liked about Professor Leiman; he was one of the few wizards Luke knew who owned a television. 

Mark interrupted his nuzzling Luke's neck to frown at the house of cards every once in a while, and finally he blurted out, "Is that a real place?"

Professor Shelly smiled and put the finishing touches on a tower. "It's the Lincoln School of Magic. Established in, um, eighteen-thirty-eight, on a rock out in the middle of Lake Michigan. One of the most heavily enchanted buildings in the world. I visited there while I was school in America. I always thought it was one of the most beautiful places I'd ever seen."

"I can see why," Luke said. "I think I might have seen a picture of it in a library book at Hogwarts once. That's the one that's half-underwater, right?"

Professor Shelly nodded. "They have big windows that look out into the lake. Fish gather around the rock, so they're always swimming by the windows, and you can sit and watch them for hours." She smiled fondly. "Which I got to do, once, although I wasn't paying too much attention to the fish, if I'm honest."

Luke shrugged and snuggled a little closer to Mark. 

"Luke," Professor Shelly said, "do you like it here?"

Luke blinked a couple of times, brought up short by the question. "What do you mean?"

"Well, I know James is a good man, and I love him to death, I really do, but he can be a bit distant. I think he's always been a grandfather at heart."

Luke smiled. That was probably the nicest way he'd ever heard anyone say that someone acted like an old man. "I do sort of miss having people my own age around. Back at the apartment, there were at least a couple of people I could go outside and talk to. But if this is the safest place for me--"

"That's just the thing, though," Professor Shelly said. "We can make any place safe for you, and you'd be around people your own age."

Luke frowned. "Professor Shelly, are you inviting me to live with you?"

Professor Shelly laughed. "Oh, god, no. You and Violet, under the same roof? I'd like to still have a house at the end of the summer." Mark chuckled. "No," Professor Shelly said, "I meant that Andromeda Tonks would almost certainly be willing to take you in. She mentioned to me that if you needed a place, hers was always open to you. You might like to discuss it with her."

Luke turned and looked at Mark. Mark raised his eyebrows. "Might not be a bad idea, Luke. I mean, I hate to say it, and you're probably used to it, but this place smells like furniture polish."

\--------------------------

The idea needled at Luke over the next couple of days. On the one hand, he was very grateful to Professor Leiman for taking him in, and he would probably have been perfectly comfortable living there for as long as Professor Leiman would accept him, but on the other hand, Leiman was an old man, and Luke would probably enjoy living with Teddy as well. 

Finally, Luke decided to come right out and ask, "Professor Leiman?"

Leiman was in the study, reading a novel with a garish, moving cover. He looked up over the edge of the cover at Luke. "Yes Luke?"

Luke swallowed a lump in his throat. "Do you mind having me here? I mean... if I wasn't here, would things be easier for you?"

Professor Leiman put his book down. "Are you feeling a bit confined, Luke?"

Luke shook his head. "Not really, sir. I mean, I know I can't go out and about like other people, not with the Death Eaters out there. But Mrs. Tonks told Professor Shelly she would probably be willing to take me in, and I think I would be happy there just as much as here."

Professor Leiman nodded. "It might be good for you to have someone your own age around more. And not just Mark. God knows having no one but your boyfriend around most of the time could go wrong easily." He sighed. "I could set up a fidelius charm or three to protect you. I'm very good with them. A secret keeper to protect the secret keeper who protects the secret keeper who protects the secret. We used to use them all the time for deep cover. All right. If you want to go to Mrs. Tonks' house, I'll talk to her."

\---------------------------

"You can drop your things in the room across from Teddy," Andromeda Tonks said, and Luke headed up the stairs, lugging his various accumulated detritus behind him. It had taken nearly a week for Professor Leiman to declare that it was safe for Luke to move, and he had the impression that the Tonks household was under so many charms and wards and spells and, knowing Professor Leiman, possibly protection by highly-trained snipers, that a mouse would have had trouble getting in. Fortinbras padded into the bedroom ahead of Luke, rushed over to the bed, and jumped up on it.

"Oh, yeah, you think you own that now, don't you?" Luke dropped his luggage next to the bed and started unpacking. Teddy came in after him with the only other thing Luke had brought, the television from the apartment. He put it down on top of the dresser. 

"You know the wiring in this house is a little older than the human race, right?" Teddy adjusted the position of the television and nodded. 

"Professor Shelly said she would get it up to code," Luke said. He started pulling books out of his trunk and putting them up on the shelves. "I'd like to see if I can get a game system for it. Maybe an old Nintendo, or an Xbox. Something to pass the time."

Teddy's eyes narrowed. "What on earth are you talking about?"

"Muggle concerns that I suspect you'll absolutely love once you see what they are," Luke replied, moving on to his clothes, putting them away in the dresser. "I bet you'd flip your lid over Halo."

Teddy shrugged. "All right. Be impenetrable." He started helping Luke get things out. It didn't take long. Really, there was something just a bit depressing about it. All of Luke's life fit into one room, and although that wasn't really unusual, especially for a thirteen-year-old boy, it served as a reminder that Luke's mother, in fact, his entire family (discounting an aunt whose name he didn't even know, and whom he had never met) was gone. He sat down on the bed when everything was unpacked, and Fortinbras crawled into his lap. Luke petted the cat absently. 

"Are you all right?" Teddy asked.

Luke shook his head. "Not really. I think I'd like to try to get a little sleep."

Teddy gave his friend a worried look, but he left him alone, closing the door behind him. Luke lay down and put Fortinbras on his chest. The kitten yawned and, Luke petted his head. Eventually, he fell asleep.

\------------------------------

The next month seemed very dreary to Luke. He got his Hogwarts letter on the fifteenth, and Professor Leiman escorted him to Diagon Alley. 

There, he met with Marissa for the first time since the attack. It was drizzling when they arrived, a dull, grey sort of attempt at rain that managed to be just as depressing as full-blown rain without washing the streets. Marissa was huddled in the corner in the Leaky Cauldron, a dark, shabby pub that concealed the entrance to the magical part of London. 

Marissa was just as blond as always, although she'd gained a couple of inches since the last time Luke saw her (which put her at about eye level). Her mother, a perpetually frazzled-looking witch who was clearly not the source of Marissa's blondness, was sipping a drink across the table from her. 

Elsewhere in the pub, Luke spotted Professor Longbottom, the herbology teacher from Hogwarts, talking to the pub's owner. Professor Longbottom looked up when Luke, Mark, Teddy, and Professor Leiman came in, and he waved and hurried over to them. 

"Hello, Luke. Hello James. I thought I'd be seeing you soon. Hannah was just saying she was looking forward to you dropping in. Gwendolyn is a sweet woman, but she can be a bit of a downer sometimes, you know. I think she's been depressing the people around her a bit."

Professor Leiman laughed. "You really got yourself a considerate one, didn't you?"

Longbottom chuckled. "Ah. She's business-minded. I told her not to worry about it too much, but you know how she is. So you're on escort duty for Luke?"

Leiman nodded grimly. "Until he's in Hogwarts. Then I get to play teacher again."

Professor Longbottom shook his head. "You're a fine teacher, James. If I'd had you instead of Snape, I still would have done terribly in potions, but it wouldn't have been your fault."

Leiman laughed. "We've got to be going, Neville. Shelly says to give her love to Hannah."

"Of course," Professor Longbottom said. "Thick as thieves unless they're arguing." He winked. "It must be an even-numbered week if they're not." He headed off to talk to his wife again, and the little shopping expedition headed off to Marissa's table. 

She'd spotted them by then, and waved to them. Luke sat down. "Hello Marissa."

Marissa looked down at the table, then looked up at Luke. She was practically oozing sympathy, and Luke half-expected her to burst into tears on his behalf. "How are you holding up, Luke?"

He gave her a smile. He was fairly sure his smiles didn't look quite so fragile anymore, and even if he didn't feel like laughing very often, he could at least fake it. "I'm all right, Marissa. It's been rough, but it's getting better. Are you ready?"

Marissa nodded. "We're ready to head off, Mum," she said, and her mother raised her cup.

"Try not to have too much fun," she said. Gwendolyn Jones had an odd accent, with elements of Spanish and French and German, clearly the product of a childhood spent wandering Europe. Luke thought it had a very musical sound to it, especially with the slight Scottish lilt fourteen years in England had given her. 

Marissa stood up, and Luke stood as well, and they all headed out the back door of the pub, into the little brick-walled courtyard that been Luke's introduction to the wizarding world. An old, empty crisp packet sat against the wall. Professor Leiman pointed his cane at it and it vanished, then he reached out and tapped bricks in the wall with the end of his cane, one after another, until the wall opened up, the bricks rearranging themselves into a doorway. Professor Leiman led the four of them through, and the wall closed up behind them. Luke looked around. 

There was Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, plastered with posters and signs advertising whatever new trinket or amusement the proprieter had come up with. Further down the alley was Flourish and Blott's, with textbooks on prominent display, and Florean Fortescue's ice cream parlor, and far down the alley, at the very end, was Gringotts, the wizarding bank. Luke thought it looked as though someone had stepped on the building, although this time, he didn't mention that to anyone. In his first year, he had remarked as much to his guide through Diagon Alley, and promptly been told to keep his mouth shut about it. Now that he knew something of goblin history, he kept his silence more out of respect for the Goblins' efforts in building the bank.

It was to Gringotts that they headed first, and there was a bit of money changing that went on. Mark was the only one who actually had to make a withdrawal, and this he did by handing over a slip of parchment to the goblin working the desk. The goblin frowned at it, ran it under about a dozen different-colored lights (including one that poduced a color Luke was fairly sure shouldn't exist), then trundled off and returned thirty minutes or so later with a small bag for Mark, which was handed over with a great deal more ceremony than back-to-school-shopping money should really have demanded. That Mark took the bag with an equal measure of gravity made Luke chuckle a bit, especially since, before the Goblin's return, Mark had been anything but grave and somber, having had to let go of Luke's bottom to go and retrieve the bag.

All supplied with money, they headed out to go and get their supplies. Luke wasn't entirely sure who had what electives, except that he knew the only one of his friends he shared every elective with was Teddy. They headed to the bookstore together, and Luke kept a careful eye on who got which books. It became immediately apparent that the only elective he shared with Marissa was Divinations, whereas the only one he didn't share with Mark was Ancient Runes (this was probably for the best; when Luke picked up the Ancient Runes textbook and peered through it, Mark was looking over his shoulder, and he made a noise of disgust).

After Flourish and Blott's, they headed down to Madam Malkin's, and all four of them were fitted for robes while Professor Leiman picked up a suit completely identical to the one he was wearing, save that it was more immaculate. 

After that was done with, they picked up more general supplies--Professor Leiman had them buy extra powdered mandrake--and finally they made a stop at Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. 

The man that greeted them this time wasn't Geoerge Weasley, the owner, but rather, a similarly redheaded man who seemed to be minding the shop in George's place. When he saw Luke, he clammed up and turned very businesslike. Luke inspected the rows of masks being sold from a big rack in the middle of the store. There was an entire row that looked like him. He handed one to Mark, and Mark put it on and immediately started laughing and trying to get Luke to kiss him. Luke finally managed to peel the mask off of him and planted a kiss firmly on Mark's lips.

"Spoilsport," Mark said, and he put the mask back on the rack. Luke moved on and found a wizard's chess set that could play itself, and several board games, including a ludo game with built in dice. He'd had one just like that for about a month before the attack. It had been in his pocket at the time, and was thoroughly ruined. 

Teddy bought a mirror that showed all the colors of everything it reflected inverted, like a photographic negative, and Marissa bought a few spellchecking pens and a quill. On the way back to the Leaky Cauldron, Mark surprised Luke. He had somehow persuaded Professor Leiman to buy a new ludo game for Luke, and Luke kissed him soundly and thanked him profusely, and then they got into the Leaky Cauldron, Marissa's mother arrived to pick her up after a few minutes, and the rest of the little troupe went back to Teddy's house.

Ostensibly, there was an open-door rule when Luke had Mark over, just the same as for Teddy and Violet, but that was overlooked from time to time. Mark and Luke snuggled up together, entangling themselves with each other as inextricably as they could manage. Once they were comfortably situated, they snogged for a while and fell asleep, only to wake up a few hours later when Mark's mother arrived to shake them awake and collect her son.

Mark leaned down to give Luke one last kiss. "I'll see you later," he said. "I love you."

Luke smiled. "I love you too, Mark."

\----------------------------

Platform nine and three-quarters was not yet crowded. Violet was there, and Teddy had run to her the moment he spotted her. They were sharing a snog as though they hadn't seen each other in months, rather than having parted with quite a bit of affection two days earlier. 

No one else from Luke's group of friends was immediately apparent, which made sense, since Professor Leiman had arranged for them to arrive very early. A number of stuffy-looking witches and wizards in matching robes stood around the platform, doing their best to be inconspicuous, but all of them unable to hide the fact that they were on guard for any and all trouble. As Luke watched, Harry Potter, in a robe identical to the others, apparated in with two other wizards. 

"Oi. Never seen an auror before?"

Luke turned around at the voice from behind him. His first thought was that it had reminded him of Violet, with the same kind of young-girl's cockiness that came from towering self-assurance and a sense of superiority. Of course, it wasn't Violet. He didn't recognize the girl that the voice was attached to. She had to be a first-year, about to board the train for the first time--if it would ever arrive, that was--although for all that she was young, she was very pretty, with fine features that promised greater beauty in years to come.  
Standing behind her was a tall man with long red hair and a couple of very ugly scars across his face, and beside him, an astonishingly beautiful woman.

"Victoire," the man said, "be polite." He stuck out a hand. "I recognize you. Luke Restimen, right?" Luke nodded, and the man went on. "My condolences, though I'm sure you've had quite your fill of condolence. My younger brother mentions you from time to time. Apparently you've made an impression on him. He seems to think you're afraid of him."  
Luke blinked a couple of times. He couldn't think who this man's brother could be. "Um, I'm afraid I have no idea who you might be talking about."

The man laughed. "Sorry. I'm Bill Weasley. My brother is Charlie, the groundskeeper's assistant."

"Oh," Luke said. "Yeah. Well, I mean, he's a bit disconcerting. Got his arm chewed off by a dragon--"

"And still says he misses them." Bill smiled. "That's Charlie for you. Me, him, and George, the battle-scarred brothers, and him the only one that got his trying to feed something." He peered off into the distance. "Is that little Teddy? Oh, never mind, his hair's just gone blue, that can only be him. I haven't seen him in... well, must be four or five years now. I see he's got himself a girlfriend."

Luke turned around and saw Teddy hurrying over. "Bill!" Teddy shouted. "I thought you'd have run off into the woods to terrorize the countryside by now!" Violet punched Teddy on the arm, and Teddy smiled. He came up next to Luke, and then his eyes went wide. "Victoire? Is that you?"

She nodded a bit shyly. "Hullo Teddy. How are you?"

Teddy smiled warmly. "I'm doing great. You look good, Victoire." He chuckled a bit. "Getting your looks from your mum, obviously."

Victoire blushed, and the woman next to Bill smiled. "You are a flatterer still, I see, Teddy."

"Well, you leave her with me, and I'll help her out," Teddy said, which caused Victoire to turn even redder. "Of course, that assumes the train gets here. Where is it, do you suppose?"

"Well," Bill said, "It was knocked off the track a few months ago. I imagine there's going to be some sort of... oh. Oh good lord."

Luke turned around just in time to see the second car start into the station. The old coal-fired steam engine was gone, replaced with a bright red, gleaming commuter train with the Hogwarts crest on the side of each car. 

"Oh, you don't suppose that's permanent," Bill said. "I mean, that would just be a bit wrong, wouldn't it? Going to Hogwarts every year in that?" 

The train pulled in and came to a stop, and the doors all opened up. The aurors, led by Harry Potter, rushed into it all at once and rushed back out after fifteen minutes or so. Potter held his wand to his throat and his voice boomed out over the platform. "The train is clear. You may begin boarding."

The few people who were there already started sending their children off to the train, and Bill shook his head. "That's just not right. I'm going to go ask Harry about it." He patted Victoire on the head. "You might as well follow Teddy and his friends, Victoire."

"Well, you heard the man, Victoire," Teddy quipped cheerfully, and he was off towards the train. Victoire hugged her mother and hurried off after him, so that Luke and Violet had no choice but to trail after them or be left behind. Luke hefted up his things, and Fortinbras jumped up onto his trunk.

Luke leaned over to Violet. "Just how many Weasleys are there, anyways?"

"At last count, about three and a half armies' worth. They're one of the most prolific wizarding families in the world." 

They climbed onto the train, and Luke looked up and down the row of cars. The new Hogwarts express had a sleek, modern look that resembled the old one only in that it had the same color scheme. Luke dragged his things after him. A mewling from the cat warned that he was about to jump down, and Fortinbras ran ahead, darting up to run alongside Teddy and Victoire. Teddy picked him up, chatting at Victoire, presumably about the cat. After a few moments, they came to a compartment--at least there were still compartments--and Teddy said something else. Victoire nodded and hurried off down the train a ways, then stopped short, put down her things, turned, hugged Teddy, and then hurried off again.

Teddy put Fortinbras on his shoulder and opened up the compartment door as Violet and Luke arrived. "Sending her off already?" Violet said.

Teddy rolled his eyes. "We have to try and fit five people in here as it is. I'm not looking forward to that, and it would be completely impossible with her, too."

Violet shrugged and followed him into the compartment, and Luke slipped in after her. Violet and Teddy sat on one side, and Teddy started pulling out a game board. Mark and Marissa came in, and Mark immediately claimed a spot next to Luke. Marissa did a little bit of sizing up of the space, and settled on sitting next to Violet. Since Violet would almost certainly be lounging on Teddy, Marissa was more likely to fit there.

Teddy finished setting up the game board and they started playing.

They went through quite a few board games on the trip, and with occasional exclamations about the train (the ride wasn't as smooth as the old one, it smelled funny, there were teams of aurors following alongside), plus the interruption of the snack cart, the trip was surprisingly fast. As the five friends swarmed out of the train, Teddy ran down to claim a carriage from the thestral-drawn carriages waiting by the platform to take them the last little ways to the school. As dark as it was, Luke could hardly see the thestrals, but he made sure to walk up to them and pat the nearest one on the nose. 

Once he had made his greeting to the thestral, Luke turned to Mark, and the two of them swung simultaneously up into the carriage. The carriages were larger than the compartments, and there was room for all five of them easily. 

Teddy leaned out the window as the carriage started rolling and let out a whoop. "League of Interhouse Friendship for life!" he shouted before Violet was able to pull him back in.

"Teddy," she said.

He turned and laid down an enthusiastic kiss on her cheek. "Violet," he said. 

She pursed her lips. "Teddy."

He frowned, and, a bit petulantly, he said, "Violet."

"Teddy, Violet," Luke said.

They both turned to look at him. "Luke?"

Mark started giggling, and that set off Marissa, and they all laughed their way back to Hogwarts.

When they got out of the carriage, Luke said goodnight to Mark, and Teddy said goodnight to Violet, and then Luke and Marissa headed off to the Great Hall and the Slytherin table for the welcoming feast. The Great Hall looked as good as ever, from the ceiling displaying the weather outside (clear and starry, if a touch chilly outside the castle) to the four house tables draped with the house colors. The staff table was full of smiles, although Luke thought some of them looked a bit strained. 

Luke and Marissa sat next to each other. Lennox Finch-Fletchley, Luke's least-favorite fellow Slytherin, tried to sit next to Luke, but Luke gave him an absolutely frigid glare, and he backed off. 

Hagrid, the groundskeeper and, at times, Luke's confidant, stepped forward with a stool just as the doors to the Great Hall burst open, and, as Hagrid set the stool down and put an old, tattered hat, missing a chunk off the top from where it had once been pointed, but now was simply burnt, down on top of it, Professor Leiman led the new students in. He strode up past the house tables, trim and proper and immaculate, his cane clicking on the marble floor, and he stopped behind the hat and the stool. A tear opened on the brim of the hat, and a dry, raspy voice began to sing. 

Welcome to the Hogwarts School,  
a place of high renown  
where you will find a lot of friends  
and seldom wear a frown.

Marvel now at Gryffindor,  
whose bold and noble light  
once shone on those in darkest need  
and helped to ease their plight!

I'm the Sorting Hat, you see,  
I tell you where to go.  
Whatever you may say or do,  
it's from your house you'll grow.

Wonder, friends, at Hufflepuff,  
whose work was great and good;  
whenever someone needed her,  
she did all that she could.

I don't look like much these days:  
I'm old and burnt and patched,  
but I remember brighter times,  
and Hogwarts newly thatched!

Children, hark, to Ravenclaw,  
both beautiful and wise,  
who outthought everybody else  
while still rejecting lies.

So on your noggin I will perch,  
and I will think a bit.  
I'll open up my brim again  
and tell you where to sit!

See the mighty Slytherin,  
cunning, bright, and pure.  
For everything that ailed him,  
his greatness was the cure!

And look at me, the Sorting Hat  
the one they left behind.  
A little charred, perhaps, but, ah!  
still sorting little minds!

While the hat sang, Luke searched the faces of the waiting first years until he spotted Victoire, and he waved at her. She waved back at him and then Professor Leiman called out, "Aibel, Kimberly," and the sorting was begun.

Kimberly Aibel wound up in Slytherin, which sort of suprised Luke, but then there was a long dry spell for Slytherin, until Stacy Flannigan. Luke counted up thirteen new students for Slytherin, which actually approached the expected number, but a pair of those were twins, (Elizabeth and Corey McPherson), and it was still a very small number.

When Victoire was called, she sat down, and Professor Leiman dropped the hat on her head, and it sighed theatrically and said, "I honestly don't know why you bother with sorting the Weasleys. Gryffindor! It's always Gryffindor!" 

Victoire beamed proudly and hurried over to the Gryffindor table. 

There weren't a lot of students after Victoire, and only one of them (Claudio Zabini) was a Slytherin.

Finally, the sorting was done, and Professor Leiman picked up the stool and the hat and took them away, and then a voice echoed out over the Great Hall, and everybody had to look for a moment before they managed to spot Headmaster Flitwick standing up on his chair. He squeaked out his speech for the beginning of the year with his customary enthusiasm.

"There are, as always, a few rules and things which you, as students, must know! First! The Forbidden Forest at the edge of the grounds is not a toy! It can and will swallow up the unwary who venture into it! Second! While there is, in fact, a small bit of swamp on the fourth floor, that is not an invitation to have mud fights on the way to Charms class! Third! Once again, Mister Filch has asked me to remind you all that the list of five hundred and three items banned from the halls of Hogwarts is clearly posted on the notice boards in your common rooms! Finally! I would like to assure you that our old train, the Hogwarts Express, will be returned to us by the beginning of the Christmas break, and work is continuing apace on repairing it! It is truly a joy to discover that, despite the malicious actions of a few irredeemable souls, you are all well and whole, and ready to begin yet another year here at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry! And now! Without any further delay, let's eat!"

And with that, food appeared on the table in front of Luke, and he dug in.

\----------------------------

"All right, whose bloody cat is this? There's only three of you, you can't exactly deny it's yours!"

Heironymous Runel shooed Fortinbras away from his bed and the cat rushed over to Luke. Luke picked him up. "Leave him alone, Ronny."

Runel gave Luke a dirty look, but it didn't last for very long. He cracked and started in on setting himself up, pulling a large tent out of his trunk and magicking it up around his bed. Runel liked his privacy, and he had the wealth and training to get it. Luke harrumphed and walked to his own bed, putting Fortinbras down on it. 

Runel wasn't Luke's friend. After what had happened, Luke was half-convinced that Runel was going to start bullying him again, and he certainly wasn't being as deferential as he had been. After Luke's connection to Voldemort had been revealed, Runel had spent the better part of two years toadying to Luke, which Luke rather patently did not want. If Luke had to guess, he would say that one of the Death Eaters that survived Professor Leiman's rescue had told Runel that whatever was left of Voldemort had failed to resurface and take control.

Luke sat down, and Fortinbras curled up on his lap while he pulled out a book and started reading. He was reading 1984 this time, figuring that he might as well get it out of the way while it couldn't depress him much further than he already was. Luke was, at least, efficient.

Eventually, when Luke could no longer focus on doublespeak and Eurasia, he marked his place in the book and pointed his wand at the light he was reading by. It winked out, and Luke blinked. He hadn't been able to do that last year, but of course, now he remembered how Tom Riddle had, and that was frightening. He curled up and went to sleep.

\--------------------------

"Hello, Mrs. Cole."

She looked up and a frown ghosted across her face. Weak muggle woman. "Tom! Goodness, you startled me. What in the world are you doing here?"

The old woman didn't know him, of course. Didn't know anyone but a pathetic boy that had been in her orphanage, a larva. That was what he was. He had been in his infancy then, like a caterpillar. Now he had gone into his cocoon and come back out again, a moth, but Cole was still a caterpillar, a worm, and she always would be. 

And of course, worms existed to be crushed. 

"This place shouldn't exist, you know," he said. "It's done the only good it ever will."

Mrs. Cole glared at him. "Thomas Marvolo Riddle, you are talking nonsense. Wool's Orphanage helps dozens of children every day."

"I really should thank you, Amelia," he said. "But somehow I don't think I will." He pulled out his wand, and before she could ask what it was, he flung the killing curse at her. A few deft swipes of his wand served to set the scene. She should have burned the place to the ground when he left, but of course, she'd had no way to know that. He set the jerrycan on top of her desk, a container that hadn't existed five minutes before. Sometimes, the muggles had their uses, and inventing supremely muggle ways to die was one of them. He set the fire and watched it burn for a few minutes, then he apparated out. Perhaps they would all die, perhaps not. None of them were his concern now. They never really had been, if he thought back on it, and

\-------------------------

Luke came awake suddenly. His hands were shaking. Somewhere behind the back of his mind, he was weeping inconsolably for god-only-knew how many children. He looked around, trying to see something that would tell him what time it was. The other boys in the Slytherin dormitory were all asleep, but he couldn't get back to sleep, not now.

He got up, and made his quiet way to the door. Fortinbras followed on his heels, and he stepped out into the common room. There was a big clock hanging above the entryway, and he peered fuzzily at it. It was four in the morning. Luke let out a gusty sigh and sat on one of the couches in front of the fireplace. Fortinbras jumped up next to him and curled up by his side, and Luke buried his face in his hands and tried not to cry too loudly.

He had gone quiet again by the time someone else was awake. It was Phineas Chenner, the captain of the quidditch team, who woke up, and he frowned at Luke, looking very puzzled in his pajama pants.

"Are you all right, Restimen?"

Luke shook his head. "No, but that's not really anything to write home about lately. Don't worry too much."

Phineas sat down next to Luke. "Are you going to sign up for quidditch again this year?"

Luke looked over at the bulky seventh-year. Phineas seemed genuinely curious. He laughed. "Oh, yeah, that's what you want. A depressed, sleep-deprived third-year to play chaser for you. It was all right last year, when you could make sure everyone was afraid of me, but what are you going to do with me this year? Cover me in quills like a porcupine? I'm not good, Phineas, I was only useful because they didn't want to beat me, because they were afraid I'd curse their faces off if they did."

Phineas sighed. "All right, come with me." He stood up and pointed his wand off in the general direction of the seventh-year boys' dormitories, and his school robe--not the rest of the uniform, just the robe--flew out to him. He pulled it on, then tapped the top of Luke's head with his wand. Luke felt a sensation like someone had poured out a bottle of cold syrup on his head. Phineas tapped the top of his own head, and he began to blend in with the background.

"I find there's really only one thing to do about a black mood sometimes," Phineas said. "And I might as well show you. Come along, Restimen."

He turned, and Luke had to hurry to keep up with him. He glanced up at the clock again as they left the common room. It was still only five in the morning, and there would be no classes until nearly eight, so whatever Phineas had in mind, it wasn't likely to take too terribly long. Fortinbras followed after them, and Phineas led him quickly up to the third floor, and a portrait of a red-faced wizard with a pile of broken wands in front of him. The wizard in the painting was sleeping until Phineas tapped the portrait with his wand and muttered "Let me in, you old fraud."

The wizard grunted out a noncomittal affirmative, and the portrait swung open.

Phineas stepped through, and Luke followed him. 

Inside the room behind the portrait was a bar. It was scarred and clearly used only for storage, and not the storage of much, at that. Nine or ten half-empty bottles stood in a row on the bar itself, and four glasses of different sizes and styles sat in a row on it. Phineas dropped whatever charm it was that was hiding him, and waved his wand at Luke. Luke felt the cold syrup slurp its way back up his body and vanish, and he took a seat.

"What do you like?" Phineas asked.

Luke shrugged. "I don't know."

Phineas grinned. "One 'I don't know' coming up." He waved his wand around and the bottles started moving, pouring themselves into a tall glass, and then into another glass, and with jabs of Phineas's wand, other things than just the liquor appeared in the glasses, red and green liquids that looked like they probably tasted pretty bad on their own but would mix well with whatever flavors Phineas was adding them to. He pushed one of the glasses over to Luke, and Luke drank.

It wasn't really sweet, and it wasn't really sour, nor was it bitter or bland. But it was strong, and it wasn't bad, and Phineas sat on the opposite side of the bar and drank with him, and before too long, Luke didn't really care how it tasted anymore. 

By the bottom of the glass, he was pleasantly, though not intensely, drunk, and Phineas seemed at least a little bit tipsy as well. Given just how much liquor had gone into the drinks, that was unsurprising.

"So what happens when you run out?" Luke asked.

"We run this thing together," Phineas said. "Me, Eloise, Cassandra, and Cassius. Last year, Jeremy bought the new bottles, but he's graduated, so it's my turn now. When we run out, everyone donates a bit of money and we get something new."

"You know we're still going to be drunk for class," Luke said.

Phineas shook his head and raised up his wand. He pointed it at Luke, and Luke felt, not sober, but as though he could handle himself like he was.

"Oh, that's great," Luke said.

Phineas winked. "You'd better get off to the shower," he said.

Luke nodded, and he hurried through the halls, back down to the Slytherin common room. It was a very strange sensation, being drunk but handling himself as though he was perfectly sober. He kept expecting to stumble, or to slur his speech, or to do something that would give away the game, but of course he didn't, and he showered and got ready for school without any problems. He left Fortinbras sleeping in the dormitory, and he got to breakfast early. Luke ate quickly, and when Mark sat down next to him, he immediately leaned over and kissed him, then made a face.

"Why do you smell like rum?"

Luke shrugged. "Phineas Chenner showed me a little room where he and some of the people from the quidditch team keep a little bar. He made me a drink. I guess there was a lot of rum in it."

"In the morning? This early in the morning?" Mark sighed. "Luke, that's a terrible idea."

"He knows this spell that's sort of... counteracting it." Luke grinned devilishly. "Still feels pretty good, though."

Mark shook his head. "Luke. That's a really bad idea. You can't just--"

"I know, all right, I know." Luke sighed and speared a bit of sausage. "I just... I had this dream, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't really a dream. I think it was Riddle, remembering... he burned down an orphanage. The orphanage where he grew up, I think. I couldn't get back to sleep, and I was sitting in the common room, just shaking like a leaf, and then Phineas came out, and he showed me... I know it's a bad idea, and it's not as though I intend to start every day with a stiff drink or anything. It's just sort of how things went today."

Mark stared hard at Luke for a few moments, and then Teddy sat down on the other side of the table, and Mark started eating.

\------------------------

The first class of the day was Charms, with the Gryffindors this year. Luke sat with Marissa and Violet, and he did very poorly on the spellwork Professor Gills gave them, which wasn't exactly a shock, as he was only really feeling clearheaded at the end of the class. He went up to Divination after Charms. Marissa went with him, and they met Mark and Teddy at the top of the Divination Tower, beneath a round trapdoor with no ladder leading up to it. Mark grinned as soon as he arrived with them, pointed at the door, and said, "Three. Two. One." Nothing happened.

Teddy stuck his tongue out. "Well done, Mark. You're a regular Cassandra."

The door opened up and a large ladder, really more like an exceptionally small staircase, descended to the floor, a cloud of thin, wispy smoke close on its heels. The smoke was acrid, and smelled equally of incense and burnt herbs. A lilting, singsong voice descended also, from somewhere just out of sight. "Come along, seekers of the future. Visions await you."

"Oh, brother," Teddy said. "She's just as loony as Harry said."

"Isn't he the one who told you you ought to take her class?" Marissa asked.

Teddy nodded. "Yeah. He says she actually does know what she's talking about, she just doesn't know she knows."

"Well that's confusing," Marissa said.

Luke looked over at Mark as the students began filing their way up the ladder. Mark's eyes had gone a bit wide. "Are you all right, Mark?"

Mark shook his head like he was trying to dislodge something that had gotten stuck in his brain. "Yeah. I'm fine. Let's go."

Mark went up first, and Luke followed him. 

Staircase or not, the ladder was narrow, and Luke felt himself blushing as he made his ascent with a prime view of Mark's backside. Mark stepped away from the top of the ladder, and Luke emerged a moment later, and looked around. The first thing he noticed was the teacups. Hundreds, maybe even thousands, of teacups in different colors sat on a bank of shelves against one wall, some old and cracked, some gleaming and new. The whole classroom looked like a palm-reader's shop writ large, with little round tables for two, and a desk that was very obviously only ever used for storing Professor Trelawney's papers. Windows with thick red curtains shed a dusty sort of light on the heavily be-cushioned room.

Mark took a seat at one of the tables, and Luke sat across from him. "Are you sobered up yet?" Mark asked.

"Yeah," Luke said. "I'll try to restrict myself to the evenings from now on."

"It would be better not to drink at all," Mark replied.

Professor Trelawney stood up in front of the class--or as "in front" as it was possible to be when half the class had their backs to her by necessity. She looked like a flower child that had passed her expiration date. She wore clothing that looked homemade, and huge, round, nineteen-sixties glasses perched on her nose. Her lined, careworn face clung to a slightly vacant expression, as though she was trying very hard to see something that wasn't there. She had frazzled, bushy white hair, and Luke thought she would likely be quite at home in a basement somewhere, discussing God and other esoteric things over a broad mixture of questionable substances.

"Well," she said. "Welcome to your first year of Divination. I, of course, am Professor Trelawney, and I will be your instructor for all of your years at Hogwarts." She put a certain emphasis on the word "all", as though to make its import very apparent. "Our first lessons will focus, naturally, on the most basic art of Divination, but you will find that they become swiftly more difficult. Divination is, in many ways, a talent with which one simply must be born. If you do not possess the Inner Eye, there is little I can do to teach you. The Seer's Art does not come from a book, but rather from within the Seer. Although the atmosphere in my classroom is the best you will likely find to enhance what gift you have, many, perhaps most, of you will not find the gift within you at all. Do not despair that you are missing it, for often the gift will lead you into despair." She leaned forward, like someone telling a ghost story. "Foreknowledge can be a terrible curse as well as a skill and a blessing. To know the terrible things that those you love will see and weather, and to be unable to prevent them, only to prepare, never to prevent..." She sighed and trailed off, then stood up straight. "Be thankful, all of you, that the dark times of the Wizarding War are behind us. Portents of death, I think, will not plague us this year." She smiled, and then suddenly gasped and clapped her hands to her mouth. "Oh, dear. Such words are a curse. We shall speak no more of dark portents today." 

She pulled out her wand and waved it, and cups flew around the room and landed in front of all the students. Professor Trelawney walked them through the process of reading tea leaves, including the proper way to drink tea in order to make one's leaves more readable. Mark barely seemed to be paying attention. Trelawney noticed, and she praised his technique, telling him that he was right to let his mind wander. 

When Mark set his cup down, Luke was already finished, and leafing through the tea-leaf-reading section of his textbook. Mark handed over his cup, and Luke slid his to Mark. 

"Ready," Luke said.

Mark nodded, looked into Luke's cup, and frowned.

Luke peered into Mark's cup. He thought he saw a few signs, but they could just as easily have been interpreted in any number of ways. "At first glance, you're either going to be jilted by every lover you ever have, open a very successful business, become a renowned and famous person, or else, naturally, since we're reading tea leaves here, you're in terrible danger. So what about me? Besides terrible danger, what else is there for me?" He looked across the table at Mark.

Mark was staring at him, his eyes wide, his face ashen. "Oh, come on, Mark. It's not as though you're actually in great danger."

Mark let out a little whimpering noise and dropped the teacup in his hands. His whole body jerked once, then again, and his arms flung out to his sides. His legs straightened all at once, and since he was sitting hunched slightly forward, that sent him tumbling over backwards, his chair going with him. "Mark!" Luke shouted. He got up and rushed around the table as Mark hit the ground, his arms slapping the floor and his head thudding only once, softly, right between the legs of Teddy's chair, having missed countless opportunities to bounce off of hard, concussiony things on the way down. Luke knelt by Mark's side. His eyes were closed, screwed shut, his face drawn and tight like he'd just taken a bite out of a lemon.

Professor Trelawney knelt across from Luke. She smelled a bit like wine. She reached out and touched Mark's face, then checked his pulse. "Oh dear. It seems the Inner Eye has taken him quite a bit harder than it takes most of us."

Luke reached down and squeezed Mark's hand. Mark didn't respond to the touch at all. He was cold and clammy. "Is he all right?"

\---------------------------

"It was terrible," Mark said. "I looked into the cup, and I could see the leaves moving." He was sitting against the wall, four floors down from the Divination classroom, his head between his knees, a glass of water sitting next to him. "There were all sorts of little shapes in them. A dog, and a horse, and a skull, and a man in a robe, and they were all moving around together, and when I looked up, you were older, and then you were younger."

Luke hugged Mark close to him. "That's not going to happen every time you try to do Divinations, is it?"

Mark shook his head. "I don't know. I don't want to do it anymore anyways."

Professor Trelawney made a clucking noise from where she stood nearby. She had handled the crisis with a sort of detached calm, and seemed to be alternating between a contemptful dismissal of Mark for fainting in her class and a strange respect. "You can't let one unfortunate little incident ruin the subject for you. Fits like yours do happen, but they're rare, and often they happen only to the most potent of Seers. I should be quite honored to teach you."

Mark swallowed. "Mum will be furious if I drop the class."

"If it happens again, I think you should," Luke said. "Your health is more important than learning Divination."

"Such a thing to say," Trelawney exclaimed. "As though you know from a glimpse of his tea leaves that he'll never make a world-changing prediction."

"I thought we couldn't change the future," Luke said.

"No, but did I not say we can prepare for it?"

Luke shook his head. "If it could hurt Mark to keep going, I don't much care. My friends are all I have right now, and I love Mark."

Trelawney shrugged. "Then hope he does not have anything important to tell you about the future."

\------------------------

Eventually, Mark and Luke returned to class, and although Mark seemed very pale and distracted through the lesson, he didn't have another episode, and even made a few nervous predictions. 

After Divination, it was down to the dungeons for Potions, which was a bit of a run. This year, it was Slytherins and Hufflepuffs, which meant that Luke sat with Mark on one side and Marissa on the other. As expected, Professor Leiman had three cauldrons on the desk, all three of them perfectly clear. This time, though, only one had a liquid of some kind in it. The one on the left was filled with something white that bubbled gently. The one in the middle was filled with the caps of brightly colored mushrooms. The one on the right was filled with an ugly, unpleasant-looking black powder. When Professor Leiman came into the room, he gave all three cauldrons a wide berth.

"Hello, students," he said. "Welcome back to Potions class. There are a few unusual things about this year for you. First, this is the last time I will be performing this little exercise with the three cauldrons. If I were to continue with it, I would have to start getting clever with how to store the damn things." That provoked a laugh. After the cauldron full of gunpowder the previous year, no one doubted that whatever Professor Leiman had in the cauldrons was unquestionably dangerous. The only question was what sort of danger it was. He leaned forward on his cane. "Aside from the fact that they can kill you, which I'm sure you've all guessed by now, would anyone care to guess what these three substances have in common?"

Runel's hand went up somewhere near the front of the room, and Professor Leiman gestured to him. "None of them look like finished potions," Runel said. "They all look like they're just ingredients."

"That's quite correct," Professor Leiman said. "Anyone else?"

No one else raised their hand. Professor Leiman smiled. "All right. I'll tell you. Each of these things--Manticore venom, deathcap mushrooms, and powdered antimony--are key ingredients in potions that can save your life. One of my predecessors in this position was known to call potioneering a 'subtle science and exact art', which the potions in which thse are key ingredients most definitely prove to be true. These incredibly deadly substances, things I hesitate to touch, are used to save lives around the world every day." He gestured at the cauldron full of venom. "Manticore venom is key in the manufacture of Skele-gro, and of dozens of other bone-mending potions. Deathcaps are instrumental in the proper mixing of Carcinicus' Draught, which cures cancer in all its forms and which thousands of people are working around the world to duplicate for muggle use. Antimony is indispensible for the creation of more than a hundred potions that can heal wounds ranging from a papercut to a dragon bite. 

"I have a confession to make, my friends. Until now, I have been giving you easy assignments." He smiled like a self-satisfied alligator. "This year, Potions will be difficult."

\---------------------------

Practical Studies was next. Luke had read up on the history of the class when he signed up for it. Apparently, it had once been called "Muggle Studies," and had been all about informing those who didn't know how muggles got along without magic. 

That had changed. Now, the class was all about managing in the muggle world, how to blend in, how to take a muggle job if you needed to, how to be a convincing muggle, in short.

Mark loved it, and Teddy thought it was monstrously boring, and then they all went to lunch. Lunchtime was spent comparing notes on the classes, which involved Teddy complaining vigorously about Professor Leiman's assertion that this year, Potions would be hard. "As though it wasn't hard enough already," he said glumly for the fourth or fifth time as he gathered another forkful of salad. "I mean, it's never exactly been simple."

"You'll do fine," Violet said. "You're better than half the class anyways."

"Not that that takes much," Mark said. "Half of his class has been Hufflepuff until this year. Most of my house is bad at Potions on principle."

Marissa snorted back a laugh at that. "As though being good at it makes you a bad person. Everyone says Severus Snape was the best Potions Master Hogwarts ever had, and he was--"

"He was a Death eater." Luke said. "He switched sides in the end, but he was a Death Eater." He grimaced. "Trust me, I know. I think I can remember the moment he changed his mind. Arguing with Voldemort over Lily Potter. It's one of the fuzzier ones, but it's in there."

There was a long silence after that, and Luke rolled his eyes. "Oh, come on. You can't expect me to pretend I can't remember these things."

Teddy shook his head. "Of course not. But it's a bit weird to go talking about them at lunch as though you're discussing quidditch scores."

"Speaking of which," Luke said, "is it just me or has everyone stopped wearing my buttons?"

"Does it really matter?" Mark said. "If you're not on the team this year, I don't see why you'd be invested in it."

"It would still be nice to think they haven't forgotten about it," Luke said. The plate vanished from in front of him, signalling the end of the lunch period, and he picked up his bag. "Straight off to Care of Magical Creatures, then?"

"Let's see what mad thing Hagrid has for us," Teddy said.

The three of them headed to Care of Magical Creatures, and the others went to a free period. Luke walked with Mark out to the grounds, and there was Hagrid, leading a pair of--Luke shuddered--thestrals out towards the gathering class. "Oh, I had better not be the only one who can see those," Luke said.

"What?" Mark said as Hagrid gestured the class over to a paddock.

"Thestrals," Luke said.

Mark's mouth puckered over to one side of his face. "He's really starting off with thestrals? Is he trying to terrify everyone out of coming back?"

The class lined up after a bit of gesturing from Hagrid, standing at the fence around the paddock. "All righ'," Hagrid said. "Who can tell me what these are?"

Luke sighed. The thestrals were standing patiently by Hagrid's side. A glimmer of movement, barely seen out of the corner of Luke's eye, drew his gaze towards Hagrid's hut. Charlie was guiding something towards the paddock, his wand pointed at it. 

A voice from near the end of the row of students said "Blades of grass."

Luke raised his hand at the same moment that a Gryffindor student a ways down the line raised hers. Hagrid called on the Gryffindor. 

"They're thestrals," the girl said.

"That's very good," Hagrid said. "An' how many of ye can see them, then? Hands up."

Luke raised his hand, along with the Gryffindor girl and a boy standing on the fence rail next to her. Nobody else did. 

"Oh, great," Luke said. "That makes me feel downright special."

Mark rubbed his back. 

"Oh, don't say it," Luke said. "That would just be a little too saccharine."

\---------------------------

Luke kept having nightmares. After the third time he woke up at some ungodly hour, too shaken to go back to sleep, he decided to do something about it. Of course, "something" was a little harder to do than it should have been, in his opinion. He first tried the infirmary, to get Madam Pomfrey to give him a sleeping potion so he could sleep through the night. According to the old nurse, though, "regular use of sleeping potions will eventually put you into a coma," which was the main point Luke expounded on when he mentioned his problem to Phineas after classes on Tuesday.

They were sitting in the shabby, illicit bar behind the portrait of the red-faced wizard. Eloise Parker was in there with them, casting dirty looks in Luke's direction, but not really doing anything particularly offensive, so Luke ignored her and focused on talking to Phineas.

"I mean," he said, sipping at his glass (Phineas called the drink he'd made Luke "rum and something else." Luke called it "tasty"), "if it keeps going on this way, I'll go into a coma from exhaustion anyways. In the last three days, I can't have got more than ten hours of sleep. It's one thing to hear about the things Voldemort did, it's another thing to see them in vivid detail in your sleep, and know exactly what he was thinking at the time. Honestly, if I've not gone funny in the head by this time next year, I'll consider it an accomplishment." He took a long swallow and frowned at the bottom of his glass, which was disappointingly visible. Phineas started mixing up something else. "I'm not going to accomplish anything at all if I can't get through classes without falling asleep, though. I'm starting to flag in Practical Studies. Practical Studies, Phineas! That class is so easy there should be a law against it, and I couldn't focus on a bit of it today."

Phineas shrugged and passed the refilled glass to Luke. "Try going to bed stone drunk."

"As if that's a solution," Luke said.

Phineas twirled his wand, one eyebrow waggling up and down.

\---------------------------

"My god, Luke. You actually look like you slept last night!"

Luke stuck his tongue out at Teddy. The number of solutions the wizarding world had for a hangover was honestly a bit intimidating, as was the fact that several of them worked. 

"I feel as though I may be a human being," Luke said. "I'm not sure. I'll have to try sleeping through the night again tonight." Mark sat down for breakfast, looking about half awake. Luke leaned over and kissed him. "Good morning, lovely."

"Don't call me lovely," Mark grumbled. "I'm not lovely. I'm a bit more male than that."

"Sorry," Luke said. "I'm just in a good mood today. I actually slept last night."

Mark flashed a grin that almost immediately collapsed back into the face he made when he didn't want to be awake. "No nightmares?" He glared sullenly at the table, and a bowl of cereal appeared in front of him. 

"Not even a dream." Luke thought about telling Mark how he'd managed the trick, but decided that would probably meet with some disapproval. Instead, he left it at that and thumped on the table. A bowl of the same cereal Mark was eating appeared in front of him. They both had a fondness for Weasley's Dragon Crunch, which, in addition to being advertised as having a sugar content of well over one hundred percent, made whoever ate it breathe fire for a couple of minutes. Violet liked to watch them eat it, mostly because she had mastered the art of pulling tiny fireballs off of their flames and holding them in her hand. Luke liked the first week of school because every muggle-born first year seemed to feel a pressing need to try the cereal, so there was a veritable cornucopia of fireballs flying over the tables. They were enchanted to be harmless, of course, which sometimes led to fireball fights. 

Fireball fights tended to lead to the loss of house points, but nobody had been able to justify banning the cereal yet. Luke suspected that magic led to some form of insanity in everyone, but it wasn't always a bad kind of insanity.

"So do you two have any plans for next weekend?" Teddy asked as Marissa sat down on the other side of Luke from Mark.

"You mean Hogsmeade?" Luke said. He gave the matter a moment's serious thought, then leaned back and blew a jet of flames up at the ceiling, which was providing a lovely view of a clear sky. There was a jet flying over, way, way up. Luke watched it for a moment, then turned to Mark. "Have we got any plans?"

Mark shrugged, and, leaking flames from his mouth as he spoke, he said (with unnecessary breathiness, just for the fire), "I sort of figured we could go to Madam Puddifoot's."

"Really, Mark?" Teddy said. "Isn't that a bit... what's that word Luke used the other day? Saccharine?" On the last word, his hair turned a very illustrative shade of pink, with little hearts in it, and stayed that way for a few seconds. The whole effect was very condescending.

"Oh, but it sounds like the perfect sort of date for us," Mark said. "We could sit there and have a very civil conversation without going all syrupy on each other, then we could take a few moments to poke fun at the other people in there who have gone to goo. Very us."

Teddy blinked rapid-fire at that. "If Violet and I weren't going to be in the Hog's Head trying to witness the exact moment the barman finally dries out and crumbles to dust, I'd be a bit tempted to go along just to watch you two make fun of everyone else."

Violet arrived last, and sat down half next to and half on Teddy. She started pilfering from his plate of pancakes. "Who's going to be making fun of everyone else?"

"Mark and Luke are going to Madam Puddifoot's on the Hogsmeade weekend. Mark wants to very pointedly not melt, and then he wants to make fun of everyone there who has."

Violet rolled her eyes and snatched a bit of fire from Mark's latest jet of flame. "It's a little sad that I can picture any one of you boys doing that. I hope you're not going to be too loud about it." She held the flame up in front her face, shrugged, and closed her hand on it. It licked out between her fingers for a moment before it went out.

"We won't be making fun of them to their faces or anything like that, if that's what you're worried about," Mark said. "Social graces might not be my strong point, but I'm not that bad."

"No," Teddy said. "You're worse."

Luke grinned. "Shut up, Teddy."


	2. I'd Like to See Someone Play Strip Scrabble

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Luke is phenomenal at making truly horrendous decisions in this installment. It hasn't even started getting bad yet.

Unconventional though it was, drinking himself a titch stupid seemed to stop Luke's nightmares. It wasn't wise, and he knew it, but when he tried stopping for a while, the nightmares came back, so he returned to the little bar in defeat. The existence of the place made him think that there must be hundreds of such places scattered throughout Hogwarts, secret rooms that the faculty knew nothing about, contraband places from bars to brothels and all things in between. He got a few giggles out of picturing generations of Hogwarts students setting up whatever it was most illegal for them to set up, each one of them believing they were being incredibly clever about it. The main argument against the existence of so many secret rooms was the question of where they were. If they were really that numerous, half the paintings in the school should hide some secret room full of wildly illegal things from all eras.

Regardless of the existence--or lack thereof--of countless rooms filled with black-market treasure, Luke really only had interest in one of them, and that was the bar. He tried to avoid visiting it anytime except for right before bed, and then he limited himself to "treating" his nightmares. 

Not that he didn't enjoy the treatment. And it got him through the days between the start of term and his first Hogsmeade trip with Mark. 

The village was patrolled by half the auror office, or at least, it looked that way. That, Luke thought when he and Mark arrived on the quaint, look-at-me-I'm-an-old-English-village-aren't-I-pretty street that served as the central thoroughfare for Hogsmeade, was probably deliberate. How many aurors there were that weren't plainly visible was anyone's guess. Luke's guess was "lots".

Hogsmeade was, Luke had to admit, pretty, even if it was forcefully so. It was also one of the most intensely wizarding places Luke had ever seen. No cars were parked on the street, no power lines ran to the buildings, and the buildings themselves were thatched and very old-fashioned. Luke would have been completely unsurprised to hear talk of the plague in a place that looked like Hogsmeade Village, or at least, if he didn't know that it was run by magic, he would have been unsurprised. 

The only relatively modern buildings were a few shops scattered here and there, and none of those looked to be any newer than powered flight.

"Any building inspector that saw this place would have an aneurism on the spot," Luke said.

Mark chuckled. "Not the one from the Ministry of Magic. Hogsmeade is always boasting that they get great marks for how well-built they are." 

Luke shrugged and let Mark lead him to a distressingly pink building with a big sign over the door that read "Madam Puddifoot's Tea Shoppe". The o's in "Puddifoot's" had little hearts in them.

"Mark," Luke said, "I can't go in there. You see, I don't have a uterus."

"They'll give you one at the door," Mark said, and he opened up the door and stepped inside. 

"Yes," Luke muttered, "I imagine they will."

The inside was just as bad as the outside promised. Crown mouldings made the whole place look like the inside of a gingerbread house. Four tables were already filled. 

Something in the back of Luke's head breathed out a sigh of relief when he saw that one of the couples at one of the tables--and they were definitely a couple--was a pair of Ravenclaw girls, in their sixth or seventh year, by the look of them. It wasn't as though he and Mark were the only same-sex couple at Hogwarts, but he still would have felt a bit awkward about having a date surrounded by so much heterosexuality.

The lights over the occupied tables were a little different in quality, subdued and tranquil in a way that seemed to invite nothing so much as snogging. Judging from the behavior of those already present, the lights worked.

A short, stocky woman with a wrinkled, happily aging look to her face perked up when Luke and Mark entered, and she hurried over to them with a teapot in one hand. "Oh, hello, dears." She--Madam Puddifoot, Luke supposed--thrust a hand at Luke. "You can only be Luke Restimen," she said. "Carrying around a bit of Tom Riddle. Poor dear. My mother used to tell tales of him, you know. Came into the shop once, after he'd graduated. Got a bit of tea and left right away, he was apparently very rude to her, and him having known her in school." She smiled, a very broad and open smile. "Glad to see you're a bit more friendly. And you've got your boyfriend here." This last was said with a half-sly tone that suggested she genuinely loved running the place couples went to have their dates. Probably, Luke thought, she enjoyed being near the center of gossip and rumor.

She led the couple to a table, and as they sat, teacups and saucers floated down onto the table in front of them. Madam Puddifoot offered up a variety of teas. Luke went with an interesting-sounding chai, and Mark chose Earl Grey. When he had his tea, Mark immediately began spooning sugar into it. After the third spoonful, Luke laughed.

"Like your tea sweet, Mark?"

"Well, I don't like it too bitter," Mark said. "Hard to enjoy it if it makes you want to go and have a mint."

Luke smiled, picturing Mark with a cup of tea and a pile of peppermints, despairing that there had to be an easier way. He sipped his tea. "I like it sweet, too, but sometimes you have to take it bitter. It makes you appreciate it more. Makes you slow down and savor it, too."

"Hm. I'd rather just take it sweet all the time." Mark grinned. "You know, I think he might be trying to peel that poor girl's face off."

Luke glanced over at the couple in question. He grinned. "You might be right. Of course, he might also be a dementor that's just exceptionally bad at taking out people's souls."

"I suppose he might also be trying to do that muggle rescue-breathing thing."

"No." Luke grinned. "If television has taught me anything, it's that the only really important thing to do with that is to always make sure you say 'breathe, dammit, breathe,' otherwise it just doesn't work. Unless you're a pretty woman who looks very distressed. Sometimes it will work then."

Mark grinned. "If there's one thing television has taught me, it's that you and Violet are the only two people in the world who understand everything you see on television."

"That's just what it looks like to you wizarding people. It all makes sense if you were raised with it." Luke grinned, partly because Mark had just started playing with his feet under the table, partly at the direction the conversation was taking. "I seem to recall Mrs. Tonks thinking it was the most incredible thing the muggles had ever done. Of course, then I told her about the moon landing."

Mark shook his head. "I still can't believe they actually did that."

"Me either, sometimes. But it's humanity, Mark. We're the descendants of the ones who looked down from the trees and thought that maybe lions weren't enough of a deterrent to hunting gazelles." He shrugged. "As a species, we're prone to making completely insane decisions."

"I suppose that does explain most of history," Mark said.

They talked on in that vein, and in others, for as long as the tea held out, and then they got another cup and watched the shop fill up. Very few couples stayed for very long, with most staying an hour or so and then departing, hand-in-hand, for someplace else, probably someplace a bit more private. 

And there was a thought that gave Luke a little bit of pause, and a bit of discomfort. Mark was a shy boy, true, but he wasn't being very shy today, and Luke found himself wondering if Mark was trying to make something very specific happen. Something that had nothing whatsoever to do with tea.

Eventually, they finished their third cups, and since neither of them wanted to spend the money for a fourth, they paid for the tea and headed out. They'd arrived early, so it was only midafternoon, and they wandered hand-in-hand through Hogsmeade. They looked in on the Hog's Head, and there were Violet and Teddy, and the positively ancient bartender, who did, in fact, look as though he might wither up and blow away at any moment. Marissa was in Honeydukes, talking with one of the Gryffindor fourth years. Mark led Luke around, showing him the various attractions of the village.

They came, at last, to the Shrieking Shack, which had lost a bit of its haunted-house romance, if Teddy was to be believed, when someone had put up a commemorative plaque in front of it that explained the whole thing.

Mark leaned up against the side of the shack, which wasn't a shack so much as a large, ugly house. It had once had painted siding, but those days were long past. Luke leaned next to him. From where they were, they had an excellent view of both Hogsmeade and Hogwarts beyond it. "It looks great," Luke said. "Doesn't it?"

Mark nodded, and then he sighed. "From this distance, Hogwarts looks like a ruined castle to me."

Luke looked over at Mark. It was always a bit jarring to be reminded that Mark wasn't actually, technically a wizard. He was a squib, a child born to wizarding parents without any magical power, and he was only able to use magic because of an amulet that he wore around his neck. 

"I wish I had a camera so I could take a picture of it for you," Luke said.

Mark smiled at that. "That would be a waste of film."

"To show you this view?" Luke shook his head. "I think I'll find someone with a camera to lend me next time we're allowed out here."

Mark leaned over and kissed him.

Luke kissed him right back.

\---------------------------

They didn't get back to the castle until the sun was creeping down below the horizon. Luke was satisfied--and more than satisfied--with how the evening had gone. As a matter of fact, if he kept a diary, he was fairly sure he would have been rushing to it the minute he kissed Mark goodnight. As it was, he tried not to swagger too much when he came back into the Slytherin common room. He couldn't do anything about what he was sure were interestingly-placed grass stains, but he made it to the dormitory without attracting any notice, and pulled out some fresh clothes and went to go take a quick shower. 

Once he was fresh and slightly damp, he headed back into the common room, peered inside long enough to determine that Phineas wasn't in there, and headed off to the bar. Phineas wasn't there, either, so Luke shrugged, decided that Phineas was probably still at Hogsmeade, and went off to try the swear-chair room.

It took a bit of wandering to find the third-floor corridor with the painting of a pile of horse manure, and then he frowned at the painting and, for the sake of politeness, knocked on the frame. After a moment or two, just when he was about to use the password, the painting swung ajar and Teddy stuck his head out.

"Well if it isn't the lovebird. I told you it would be him, Violet. Hold on a moment. We've been playing cards, and we haven't got anything to wager with, so we'll need a moment to... ah... compose ourselves." He shut the painting, and Luke grinned. This close to curfew, the only people still out of the common rooms were probably either on their way back or planning to break curfew anyways. Mark had protested that he was too tired to stay up too much later, and Marissa had been reading a book in the Slytherin common room the last time Luke saw her, but he'd given about even odds to the possibility that Teddy and Violet would be up, and only slightly lower odds to the possibility that they would be doing something that Professor Shelly would hang Teddy up by his ears if she found out about.

The painting opened up again, and Teddy gestured Luke inside. Claw-footed furniture, heavily vandalized and covered in an ever-changing array of archaic obscenities, sat around a low table in a windowless room. A deck of cards was spread out on the table. 

"Just as well you showed up," Teddy said. "I think she was cheating."

"I didn't hear you complaining," Violet said. "So how was your date."

Luke grinned from ear to ear and picked up the jack of clubs. "From what I gather, it was slightly better than yours. Mark didn't cheat at cards, for one thing." He flopped down into a cushy chair and picked absently at the same deeply-carved "gadzooks" he'd spent hours picking at the year before. "And shame on you, Violet. That sounds suspiciously like you were teasing poor Teddy."

"I neither cheated nor teased," she said. "I told him I would play his game, and I did. I happened to keep winning, and that was all."

Luke leaned back and put his feet up on the table, tossing the card in his hand back onto it. "Did one of you two nick a few new cups from the kitchen?"

Violet leaned over and pulled a little tray with cups on it out from one of the corners of the room. If they left cups in the room, they were taken away in the night, but only dirty ones. The little teapot they kept in there vanished every week, whether they used it or not.

Teddy grabbed the teapot from another corner, stuck his wand into it, and muttered "Aguamenti." The sound of rushing water obscured the countercharm, and he handed the pot to Violet. She threw some tea leaves in while Teddy filled a cup with water. Luke reached out and dipped the end of his wand into the cup Teddy had just filled. He concentrated, and started transfiguring the water. It took about as long for Violet to bring the kettle to a boil as it did for Luke to turn the water into rum, and then Violet poured the tea into three of the other cups, and Luke portioned out rum into each cup, which actually made for a damn strong drink divided only three ways, but, what the hell, it was the weekend.

"So where exactly did you two go after Madam Puddifoot's?" Teddy asked, muttering a spell to make the cards shuffle themselves and put themselves away as he waited for Luke's answer.

"We went around Hogsmeade," Luke said, "and then up to the Shrieking Shack. And after that we went off for a walk in the woods."

Teddy flashed Luke a lupine grin. "And then you put on different robes and took a shower. Leaving out a couple of details?" 

Luke shook his head. Usually, Teddy was just his normal, usual, goofy everyday self, but sometimes he read through things faster than you could put them in front of him, or made clever observations like that, and it became very obvious why he was in Ravenclaw. "Do you really want to know about those details, Teddy?"

"Well, Mark's not going to turn up pregnant, is he?" Violet said, just as straight-faced as if she was asking if Mark had enjoyed himself as well. Which, in a sense, Luke thought, she was.

"Well, they do give you a uterus when you walk into Madam Puddifoot's."

Teddy had just taken a tentative first sip of his drink when Luke spoke, and he laughed and some of it came out of his nose. "AH! Oh, god, that's horrible! It's like I've just scrubbed out the inside of my face! And it's hot, too! Oh, I'm going to have to kill you, Luke! Oh, that's terrible." He went on like that for a bit longer while Luke and Violet watched in amusement. Eventually, though, he sat back and said, "but Luke, the question is, are you still a virgin? Because you look awfully smug, and you've gone and changed clothes and showered."

Luke grinned. "Yes, I'm still a virgin. Mark didn't quite want to go that far. And that's all you're hearing about it."

Luke took a sip of his own drink. It didn't so much have a bite as a tendency to claw its way down its hapless victim's throat. He was going to have to work on that transfiguration. He took another swallow. 

"Well, I think it's sort of sweet," Violet said. "I mean, you're obviously great together, it only makes sense that you would be a bit... you know... overcome sometimes."

"We weren't overcome by anything," Luke said.

Teddy grinned. "I can just picture Mark planning it out. He'd have little charts and maps and a schedule for you to--"

"Shut up, Teddy," Luke and Violet chimed together.

Luke steered the conversation carefully away from what he and Mark had been up to and onto safer subjects, and he drained his cup, then made another round. The three of them sat up for an hour or so, just talking the night away, and when Luke headed off for the common room, he found that he was having a little trouble following a straight line. He made it to the dormitory all right, and managed to avoid flopping down on top of Fortinbras, and he kicked off his shoes and went to sleep, and he didn't dream about anything.

\------------------------

Mark seemed almost nervous about talking to Luke the next day. It was very nearly cute, and very nearly frustrating, But Luke let him have his space. They just sat with each other through breakfast, without talking much. Luke had a bit of a headache, probably to do with mixing alcohol and caffeine, so he didn't object to the silence. It wasn't hostile or particularly awkward, so he was happy to let it go. It was Sunday, so all five of them spilled their drinks quite deliberately on themselves in order to ensure that the swear-chair room would be waiting for them. 

After breakfast, they all headed for the room, and today, instead of taking a chair like usual, Mark dragged Luke over to the couch and curled up with him. Luke shrugged and held onto Mark while Teddy pulled out his pocket Scrabble game and set it up.

"Are you two a team?" he said.

Mark nodded. "Unless Luke wants to play for himself."

Luke shook his head. "I'll take pity on you. You're terrible at this, but you've got a much larger vocabulary. Together, we're probably a complete Scrabble player."

Mark chuckled and Teddy set the few separate pieces down in their box on the table. 

"If you're a team, then I suppose Violet and I are playing by ourselves," Teddy said. He looked over at Violet with a quasi-fearsome expression on his face, and his features went sharp and aggressive for a few moments. Violet stuck her tongue out at him, and Luke laughed as he started pulling out pieces for himself and Mark. The box the pieces were in was only big enough for five or six of the little tiles, but it kept refilling itself as pieces were pulled out, so everyone was able to get their tiles. 

Mark arranged the letters three different ways before he settled on something he liked, and by then, Marissa had already opened up with, appropriately enough, "begin."  
Mark pointed to the tiles, and he conferred with Luke for a bit. Luke shook his head, and they laid down "egg", and the game began in earnest. 

They talked while they played, and naturally, the first thing that they talked about just had to be sex.

"So you and Mark had an interesting day yesterday," Marissa said. 

Luke raised an eyebrow and tried to hint as broadly as possible with only his tone that Marissa should drop the subject. "You think so?"

Marissa grinned slyly. "Well, either that or you stayed out until nearly dark and needed a change of clothes because you were having so bloody much fun drinking tea."

"Tea stains, you know," Luke said.

Mark giggled. "Stumbling in late at night, missing a shoe, all covered in tea stains..."

"Wearing a traffic cone on your head," Luke added in for good measure.

"Can't get your hair to change back from bright blue," Teddy chimed in. He looked around and blushed. His skin tone went darker to cover it up. "I suppose I'm the only one who ever has that problem."

"I imagine your mum had it from time to time," Violet said.

Luke grinned. "Of course, she also had problems with picking fur out of her teeth." Mark burst out laughing.

"Oh yeah. A werewolf joke." Teddy made a rude gesture, but he did it sort of halfheartedly. "That's classy. Go after my heritage. Hey Luke. Terrorize any countrysides lately?"

"No," Luke said. "But then, I'm not half dragon."

Teddy's foot kicked out under the table, but Luke was curled up with Mark, so he wasn't there to be kicked. Teddy contented himself with a dirty look, but he clearly didn't mean it. Luke didn't mind the dirty looks. He had successfully derailed the conversation, and he pushed it off in a new direction as well as he could. "So Violet. While we're on our peculiarities, how are you doing with firestarter... you know... being?"

Violet shrugged and held her hand out in front of her. "You've pretty much seen what I can do. I can turn it off and I can turn it on, and I can make the flames do what I want." A little fireball formed above her hand. "Assuming, of course, that what I want the fire to do is this."

"Is the training hard?" Marissa asked.

Violet nodded. "My dad runs me through it, but he's off in other places a lot, so we train really hard when he's here. It's this weird combination of mental and physical effort. I always end up exhausted afterwards, but I can tell I'm getting better. What about you, Mark? What about that divinations thing?"

Mark had stayed in class, and he hadn't had any further incidents in Divinations, but he still looked a bit pale and distracted when he got up into Professor Trelawney's classroom. Luke knew he was having trouble sorting through the raw sensory input he got from trying to do even simple things in class, but he was making improvements with practice. All he said in reply to Violet, though, was "It's all right."

Teddy snorted. "Oh come on, Mark. You can say more than that about it."

Mark shrugged. "I'm working on it. There's not really much else to say."

Teddy looked about ready to pester him a little more, but Luke shot him a look and he didn't press it.

A few rounds went by without any more talk, and then Marissa said "I hear Hagrid brought out the unicorns the other day."

Luke nodded. "I think he's going through everything with hooves he can think of. Next thing we know, he'll bring in those horses from Beauxbatons. You know, the ones they use for official transportation."

"The Abraxans," Teddy said. "Harry told me about those once. He said they were huge. I hope he does bring them in. That sounds exciting." He frowned down at the board. "Is that really a word, Violet?"

Violet poked at the board. "Is that a word?" The word "pixel" glowed green for a moment and Violet smiled at Teddy. "It's a muggle word."

"I'll show you on the television next time we have it," Luke said.

They went around a few more times, and finally they ran out of tiles, and Luke looked around the board, and then Mark pointed, and they laid down the x they'd been keeping since the start of the game. All they managed was "box," but nobody else was able to attach anything to it. They didn't win, but they came a lot closer to it than Mark usually did.  
The little party played one more game before lunch, and then went off to eat together. It was definitely a lazy sort of a day. Mark and Luke went for a walk around the castle.  
Mark didn't say anything for a few minutes as they walked, and finally Luke pulled him aside and found a place to sit near a window. "Mark, are you all right? Do you want to talk about it?"

Mark shook his head. "I'm just thinking, all right. Don't... don't try to make a big deal out of it."

Luke looked down at the ground. "I just want to be sure you're not angry or upset or something."

"I'm not," Mark said. "I'm just trying to take it seriously. I mean, it's not as though we went and did, you know, everything with each other, but it's still a bit more than snogging."

Luke chuckled. "a bit more than snogging" was probably a bit of an understatement, but only a bit, and even that probably had a bit of wiggle room attached to it, depending on who you asked. He kissed Mark and sighed. "This is you being analytical again, isn't it?"

"Being analytical is what got you and me together in the first place," Mark said. "Are you going to complain about it now?"

Luke shook his head. "I'll let you analyze." He grinned. "Come on, let's go."

He stood up, and they walked around the castle a bit more until they got back to the swear-chair room. Teddy was sitting there on his own, reading a book, draped bonelessly over a chair, like he'd been poured there. 

"You look relaxed," Luke said. "Where are the girls?"

Teddy shrugged without looking up from his book. "They went off to go hang around with each other for a while. Probably talking about shoes, ponies, and boys."

"You forgot hair," Mark said. "Girls like hair, right?"

"I know when I tried being bald, Violet told me to change it back right away," Teddy said. Apparently, he felt the need to demonstrate, because the bubblegum-pink mane he was sporting sucked back into his scalp, leaving him completely bald. Mark laughed.

"Teddy, she told you to change it back because you have a lumpy head," Luke explained, right on the edge of joining in Mark's laughter.

"I do not," Teddy said, finally putting his book down.

"You've got little bulges," Mark said.

Teddy frowned and the lumps on his head changed their pattern, but remained lumps. 

"Oh, stop," Luke said. "I'd like to keep my lunch! Go and practice that in a mirror if you have to."

Teddy sighed and let his hair grow back out. He extended the middle out so that he had a mohawk and he pulled out a deck of cards. "You want to play for chocolate frog cards?"

"I haven't got mine here," Luke said.

Teddy grinned. "go and get them, then."

"I don't want to gamble with my cards, either."

Teddy grinned wolfishly. "Live a little. Only bet the ones you don't care too much about."

Mark reached into his pocket and slapped something down on the table. When he took his hand away, there was a single knut on the table.

"Or we could raise the stakes a bit," Teddy said. "How much have you got on you?"

Luke reached into his pockets, fished around, and brought out a handful of coins. Teddy slapped his own funds onto the table, and slid a single knut out to the center.

By the time the girls returned, Mark had taken Teddy to the cleaners and looked like he was trying to decide whether or not to demolish Luke's stack of coins. 

"Really?" Violet said when she came in. "We leave you alone for an hour or two and you start a little gambling ring?" She sat down at the table. "Well, let me see if I can win back my boyfriend's money. Deal me in." She pulled some money from her pockets as Luke started dealing the cards. 

Mark destroyed her, and then finished picking apart Luke's stack of coins. By the time he was done, he had a few galleons' worth of coins in front of him. He clicked them all around for a minute or two, and then he started counting them out and surprised everyone but Luke by distributing the coins evenly among the players.

Teddy rolled his eyes. "You're too nice, Mark."

Mark shrugged. "You're my friends. I'm not taking all of your money, and I still made a profit."

Marissa yawned hugely. "It's getting late. I'm going to bed." She got up and walked out after getting some form of farewell from everyone. 

"So," Teddy said. "Are you going to join us for a drink tonight, Mark?"

Mark raised an eyebrow. "A drink?"

Teddy nodded. "Luke's working on turning water into rum, and Violet can heat up a kettle really well, so we have rum and tea."

Mark glanced over at Luke for a moment, a touch of speculation on his face, and he shook his head. "That's probably not a good idea."

"Your loss," Teddy said. 

With Mark there, they didn't spike the tea, but they had tea anyways, mostly because that was what they had available. Teddy and Violet headed off to bed after a while, and Mark and Luke were alone.

Mark put the used cups over to one side of the table.

"You know, I might be willing to do it again," he said. "I mean, if you want."

Luke chuckled. "You might?"

"All right, I would," Mark said. "Only, we can't just do it whenever. Not just because we're bored or something. I mean, even if it's not really sex, it's still--"

"It's still awfully intimate," Luke said. "I get it, Mark. It's all right, I understand. I'm not going to go any further than you want to."

Mark had been slowly turning bright red. He turned a lot redder in a hurry and muttered, "You're the one that started it."

Luke kissed him, pulled out his wand, aimed it and the door, and muttered "Colloportus." The door made a soft sound as it sealed itself shut.

\-----------------------

"Luke," Mark said much later, when they were both contemplating the long walk through the dark castle to their common rooms, "how often do you drink at night?"

Luke sighed. "Every night, Mark. It's all that keeps me from having nightmares that keep me up every night."

"Luke, that's not healthy!"

"I know," Luke snapped. Mark flinched, and he sighed. "I know," he said again, more quietly. "But Madam Pomfrey won't give me a sleeping potion, and I doubt it's very healthy to work on three hours of sleep every day of my life, either."

"Can't you mix up your own sleeping potions?" Mark said. "You're actually good at potions."

"Can you imagine if I made a mistake, though?" Luke said. "I mean, that's what Professor Leiman is always saying, is that it's dangerous if you don't know exactly what you're doing. And besides, Madam Pomfrey said that it would put me in a coma eventually even if I had perfectly mixed potions every time."

"So you're drinking instead," Mark said.

Luke nodded.

"You have to find a better solution."

Luke nodded.

Mark kissed Luke. "Goodnight, Luke," he said. "I love you." He walked up to the door and pushed. It was still sealed.

Luke pointed his wand at the door and muttered "Alohamora." The door glowed for a moment and unsealed itself. "Goodnight, Mark. I love you too."

Mark walked out the door, and Luke sighed and followed after him a few minutes later. 

He was nearly caught once, by one of the ghosts, but he managed to duck out of sight, and he came in through the mostly-empty common room not long afterwards. He wasn't even going to try for a drink tonight. Between feeling guilted over it from Mark and how late it was, he just didn't feel like trying, and it was late enough that an extra hour of missed sleep wouldn't make much difference one way or the other.

He went to bed, and before long, he was asleep.

\----------------------------

"Tom, where are we going?"

He turned around and glared at Amy. "Honestly, Amelia, if you can't keep up, I'll let you fall, and then where will you be? At the bottom of the ocean, that's where, and you'll deserve it." He kept climbing down, looking at Dennis below him. The boy was useless, but at least he had the sense not to complain.

Dennis got to the ledge at the bottom of the cliff. He followed, and Amy came last. 

"All right, Tom," Amy said. "Now what? What's this big thing you've just got to show us?"

He smiled and stripped off his shirt, then plunged into the water below. Just at the bottom of the cliff, it was deep and relatively tranquil. For the moment, at least. He started swimming. "Well, come on then, unless you're too scared to try!"

Dennis jumped in first, and then Amy followed him, and they both followed their self-appointed leader into the cave. He reached the ledge he was looking for and pulled himself up out of the salty water. Dennis came up after him, and leaned over to help Amy up.

He looked over the edge. The tide would start coming up any minute now. Time to get started.

He leaned back against the dry wall of the cave. "You know, a boy our age died in here a few years ago. He stayed after the tide came up and drowned."

"He drowned?" Amy said. "But the tide doesn't fill the cave. You can see the mark. The high water only gets to there." She pointed to a spot not far above the surface of their little ledge. With water up to that point, they would only be ankle deep.

He nodded. "But the water pushes you in if you try to swim out. He got wet and uncomfortable, tried to swim out, and couldn't get back up on the ledge." He stuck his tongue out. "Probably haunting this place right now, waiting to drag someone else down with him."

"Tom," Amy said, "Don't!"

He grinned. A wave splashed up against the ledge.

"Oh come on, Amy," Dennis said. "We're going."

"No!" he shouted. "You're staying right here." Pitching his voice just right, he squeezed an echo that shouldn't have been there out of the cave, and the last two words hissed back across the three of them. "Poor little Alan is awfully lonely. Isn't he?"

"Yes, yes, yes," the water seemed to hiss as it rushed against the rocks. The rising tide pushed a wave up against the ledge again, and this one sprayed over him, wetting his back, but seeming to leave him untouched. 

"If you're really lucky, maybe he'll let you leave."

He smiled and made the echoes in the cave change, so that it seemed to say "No leaving" over and over. He smiled a little more broadly, and suddenly the cave sang out, instead, "swim, swim, swim."

He turned and dove into the water, swam his special way so that he could get through, swam under the water, and let them think of that what they would. When he got out of the water outside the cave, he could hear Amy calling out his name. He pulled his shirt back on and climbed back up the cliffside.

\------------------------

Luke woke with a start. He had the vague impression that that time, at least, no one had died, but what trauma those two must have gone through, trapped for hours with the waves rushing around their feet, hissing at them to swim, to give in and drown, certain their classmate had just succumbed to the same strange urging.

His hands were shaking. Luke headed out to the common room. It was nearly time to wake up anyways. He sat back on one of the big fluffy chairs and waited for everyone else to wake up.

\------------------------

That Wednesday was the first meeting of the Duelling Club for the year. 

Marissa didn't attend, and Mark came along mostly to watch, but Luke was looking forward to it anyways. The Great Hall was as packed for it as ever, and the four of them found a place near the back. They didn't bother trying to hold a conversation, since it was too loud for that. Mark leaned back on Luke, and Violet leaned on Teddy, who was making himself tall specially for her.

They watched the other students talking and milling around, standing back from the stage that Professor Shelly had set up in the Great Hall. Finally, Professor Shelly herself stepped up onto the stage, gestured towards the ceiling, and silenced everyone with a thunderclap. She started giving her usual opening-the-club speech.

"How do you suppose Professor Leiman is going to beat her this time?" Teddy asked in a whisper.

Luke shrugged. "He could do anything. Maybe he'll do it without any offensive spells."

"Or maybe she'll win," Violet said.

Luke grinned. "Just because she's your mother doesn't mean she's as terrifying in a duel as you are."

"I don't know if there is anybody who's as scary in a duel as Violet," Mark said.

"Well, there is," Luke said, "But he died in nineteen-eighty-one. And then again in ninety-eight."

"Oh, yeah, compare me to Voldemort, that's nice," Violet said. "You're a real charmer."

"I only compared your duelling skills to him. Everybody knows he was a really good dueller."

"It's still a bit rude," Teddy said.

"Maybe I ought to get a free pass on that sort of thing," Luke replied.

Violet seemed like she was about to reply, but just then, Professor Leiman stepped up to the stage, and as usual, his limp nearly vanished as he took his place across the stage from Professor Shelly. He bowed to her and she bowed to him, and then his cane snapped up and he said, "Rebondi!"

Professor Shelly twirled her wand once over her head and then pointed it at the ground near his feet and opened up with "Bombarda!"

Professor Leiman tried to jump back, but his leg gave out as the bit of stage right in front of him exploded with a great deal of smoke and noise, and he fell back onto his tailbone and snapped "Stupefy!" A jet of red light rushed out of the end of his wand and he followed it up with something Luke couldn't catch, but which sounded suspiciously like the spell Violet had used to open up her first duel with him. The effect of it was certainly identical, a coherent pulse of purplish energy that arrived fresh on the heels of his stunner. 

Professor Shelly caught the stunner on a shield spell and ducked under the purple energy, and now the smoke and dust of her bombarda was working against her, as Professor Leiman snapped out "Concelicus," waving his cane at the smoke. It thickened nearly to opacity, and he took the opportunity, not to stand up, but rather to drop flat on the ground and roll to one side. Professor Shelly sent a stunner through the smoke at precisely where he would have been if he had stood, but of course, he wasn't there. She sent another stunner to the left of where he would have been, and Professor Leiman got to his feet and held out his cane. "Refrectus," he said calmly, and he started forward through the smoke. Professor Shelly aimed another stunner at him as he emerged from the smoke, but it tore itself apart as it passed through Professor Leiman's shield.

He smiled, and then Professor Shelly snapped off the same slavic-sounding spell he had followed his first stunner with. Professor Leiman dropped his shield spell and pivoted on his left leg, pointed his cane at Professor Shelly and snapped "Riddikulus!"

Suddenly, Professor Shelly was dressed like a cowboy in an old western, complete with a comically oversized Stetson. There was a red bandana over her eyes and a cigarette in her mouth, and Professor Leiman grinned as Professor Shelly called out "Hey!"

"Stupefy," he snapped, and the spell hit the surprised defense professor squarely in the chest. She went over backwards, her hat coming off and bouncing away across the floor.  
Professor Leiman grinned when he revived Professor Shelly. She sat up, pulling the blindfold down from her eyes, and looked down at herself. She picked up the cigarette from where it had fallen on the stage. "Really? Like an execution?"

Professor Leiman grinned. "It threw you off, and you looked pretty funny from where I was standing."

He waved his cane at the smoke, and it vanished.

Luke looked around, trying to find a partner for his first duel, and eventually settled on waving Harry Martins over. He found a mat, got Mark to wish him luck, bowed to the Gryffindor boy, and raised up his wand.

Harry opened up with a stunner, and Luke sent it right back at him with a rebondi shield, but Harry had already twisted out of the way, and he fired off a bolt of bluish light with a shouted incantation that rocked Luke back on his feet. 

Luke dropped his shield and retaliated with a stunner, which Harry blocked, and they went back and forth like that for a while. Eventually, Luke won with a well-timed disarming charm, but he and Harry were both completely exhausted. Luke made his way over to Mark, and Mark handed him a glass of water. 

"Where did you get this?"

Mark grinned. "After the third volley, I figured you might want something to drink when you were done."

"Well, thanks," Luke said. He sipped the glass and watched the other duels. His duel with Harry had been a long one, and most people were on their second, or even their third. 

"You're pretty even with him," Mark said.

Luke nodded. "You'd think I'd pick up more than parlor tricks from getting Voldemort's memories forced on me."

"I think I like you better when it's just parlor tricks." Mark leaned against Luke. 

Luke finished draining his glass while he watched the duellers. Teddy and Violet were going back and forth in their latest duel. Teddy was badly outmatched, but he had gotten good at the defensive game from regular duels with Violet. Luke looked around and spotted Victoire Weasley squaring off against a Hufflepuff girl. She was good, moving only when she absolutely had to. "Look at Victoire," Luke said, pointing.

"She's doing pretty well," Mark said. 

Luke nodded. "She's good. See, she just blocked that stunner when it would have been easy enough to dodge it."

Victoire took down her opponent and walked over to revive her, helped her up and turned to watch Teddy. It wasn't long before Violet managed to bring Teddy down, and she helped him up and kissed him after she revived him, then the two of them headed over to Luke and Mark.

"Tire yourself out, Luke?" Teddy said.

Luke nodded.

"Hello Teddy," Victoire said. Luke hadn't seen her start approaching, but now she was smiling brightly at Teddy, standing just inside arm's reach.

"Hello Victoire," Teddy said. "How are you?"

"I'm doing great," she said. "This is fun!"

She hung around with them for a while, making occasional efforts to chat with Luke, but mostly talking to Teddy. Luke got the impression that she might be a bit smitten. Violet tolerated Victoire's slightly-giggly presence despite her fawning over Teddy. Luke suspected Victoire was going to get a bit of a talking-to after the meeting.

Eventually, he grabbed Teddy by the arm and hauled him out to one of the mats, and they duelled. Teddy and Luke were fairly well matched, and Teddy beat him this time.  
After the meeting, Luke gave Mark a kiss goodnight, and said goodnight to Violet and Teddy, and then hurried off and caught up with Phineas. 

"Phineas!"

Phineas turned and smiled at Luke. "Coming in for a drink?"

Luke grinned. "Yeah. I'll be there."

\----------------------

Practical Studies was the class in which Teddy was most likely to cause trouble. Professor Lynch bored him, and about a week after the Duelling Club meeting, he finally went a little too far. After a complex, very typically Ravenclaw prank involving a cheering charm and a rickety desk, Teddy found himself in detention. He'd managed to drag Luke down with him (Luke was the one who had actually cast the cheering charm, having been assured that it would be "hilarious"), and Luke arrived at the same time.

"You know this is your fault," Luke said. "I could be with Mark right now. I could be outside, enjoying the perfectly nice day."

"It's chilly anyways," Teddy said, but before he could get any further, Professor Lynch opened up her door and gestured the pair inside. Her office was plastered with posters of various muggle subjects, from the famous picture of Einstein with his tongue hanging out to a poster of the band Motley Crue. A model airplane sat on top of a bookshelf full of thoroughly non-magical books. Luke spotted a copy of the Bible nestled up against a copy of The God Delusion and wondered idly why the bookcase hadn't burst into flames from sheer contrast.

Sitting on Professor Lynch's desk was a small stack of red envelopes under a paperweight, which Luke doubted he was going to have anything to do with, because there was also a stack of papers that was much larger and looked much more boring.

Professor Lynch herself, a bright-eyed witch only about six inches taller than Luke, looked somewhere between cross and puzzled, wearing blue jeans and a blouse that did not go well with blue jeans at all. Luke had noticed that the blending-in-with-muggles advice in her class was somewhat spotty. 

"Hello, boys," she said. She pointed to a small table with two uncomfortable looking chairs, one on either side of it. As she pointed, the boring-looking papers flew from her desk to the table, and two small baskets and a rubbish bin joined them. "Take your seats and get to work. Slips in red ink are very important, they go in the blue basket. Slips in green ink go in the green basket. When you find a slip that's damaged, copy it out in the right ink color and throw the original into the trash. You'll be here until you've finished that stack, or until curfew, whichever comes first. There will be no talking, and there will be no fooling around. Is that clear?"

Luke and Teddy chimed "Yes, ma'am," and Professor Lynch smiled.

"Excellent. And Mister Lupin, you will return to your natural hair color."

Teddy grumbled irritably and his hair turned black. Luke happened to know that that wasn't his natural hair color, but obviously Professor Lynch didn't. As a matter of fact, Teddy was naturally ginger-haired, although he tended to drift towards brown when he was relaxed.

Lynch gestured them towards the table, and they took their seats and got to work.

Every time Teddy reached for the pile, there was a different tattoo on the back of his hand. Luke thought it was an interesting display of talent, even if the lettering was a bit rough and hard to read. Teddy held a one-sided conversation with Luke that way.

"This is so boring."

"Ha! Whatever poor bastard got written up with this one really caught hell."

"I think I'd rather be out in the chilly air."

"You know, I like muggles, but this woman is a bit frightening about it."

And so on. Luke had to suppress giggles a couple of times, and once, he actually laughed aloud. When Professor Lynch came over to see what was so funny, Teddy had already gotten rid of the message on the back of his hand, and Luke was only able to protest that something on one of the slips had reminded him of a joke.

Luke and Teddy worked until curfew, and Professor Lynch reviewed their work with a critical eye and then dismissed them.

Luke went to the Slytherin common room by way of the kitchen, where he picked up a glass of pumpkin juice. He drank about a quarter of it and kept the rest until he could get to a place to sit. When he came into the common room, he spotted Phineas, hurried over to him, and begged a bit of firewhiskey off of him for the drink, then sat down at a little table--ostensibly meant to study at--with Marissa.

She was studying, reading through her copy of that year's potions textbook, paying very close attention to the ingredient list for Girding Potion. When Luke sat down, she rolled her eyes. "I can't believe you're drinking that here."

Luke sighed. "If you're going to get on my back about it, I can go somewhere else. Are you having trouble with Girding Potion?"

Marissa shook her head. "I'm just not sure why he keeps saying we've got to add goat's milk. It's not anywhere on the ingredient list."

Luke pulled the book over and looked over the ingredient list, then stuck his finger in the page and flipped to the back, the index of potions ingredients. He frowned as he looked through it, then flipped it back to the potion recipe.

He took a swig of his drink and grimaced as it burned on the way down.

"Goat's milk is pretty good for thickening potions that help the drinker. I know it's a main ingredient in Felix Felicis. And it's high in protein. Logically, that should have some effect."

"I don't see why, though," Marissa said. "And he was so inexact about it. 'A splash' is not an appropriate unit of measure."

Luke shrugged. "Then why are you trying to write your essay about the goat's milk?"

"Because everyone is going to do the fairy wings, and I'd rather be original. You know how Professor Leiman likes when we're original." She glared sullenly at the book. "And if I can show insight about why he had us add that ingredient, he'll give me better marks."

Luke drained his glass and then frowned down at it. He had been drinking faster than he thought. "You could always talk about the water base. No one ever talks about the water base."

"Except for you when you think you can get away with it."

"He laughed his head off the first time," Luke said. "And he gave me high marks for it the second time when I made an entirely different set of points."

"And then the third time, it didn't work at all," Marissa said.

"Well, yeah, but you weren't meant to remember that."

Marissa flashed him her most condescending smile. "Too bad I'm not drinking myself stupid. Did you really finish that already?"

Luke nodded. "That's your fault. I was paying attention to trying to help you, and I wasn't thinking about how much I was drinking." He stood up, and the alcohol hit him in a rush. His hands flew out to catch the edge of the table. "Merlin's saggy left nut," he muttered. "I always forget how firewhiskey does that."

"Go to bed, Luke," Marissa said.

Luke nodded, then winced. "I've still got to feed--"

"I'll take care of Fortinbras for you," Marissa said. She pointed at the dormitory door. "Sleep."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you really want to know what Luke and Mark did at the end of their date, ask me and I'll tell you, but it's not going to be thrilling.


	3. YELLING! RAAGH!

The detentions continued for a couple of days, and Teddy kept passing little messages by tattoo. He got better at it, and by the end of the third day, they were all very easy to read, if not necessarily skillful or pretty.

That weekend, he showed up in the swear-chair room while Luke and Mark were cuddled up on the couch, Mark reclining on Luke, Fortinbras curled up on Mark's lap.

"Luke!" Teddy exclaimed. "Mark! Look what I've got!"

He waved a small stack of red envelopes in the air. "Teddy," Luke said, "where did you get those?"

"Probably best you don't know," Teddy said. "They're actually sort of banned in Hogwarts."

"Are those howlers?" Mark said, sitting bolt upright. Fortinbras meowed irritably and jumped down.

"Well, yeah, they are," Teddy said. 

"Right," Mark said. "Whatever you're up to with those, I don't want to have anything to do with it. I'd rather not go deaf."

He stood up. "You coming along, Luke?"

Luke frowned. "Howlers are those letters that scream at you, right?" Mark nodded. Luke grinned. "I'd like to see what he's got in mind. This could be an entertaining sort of insanity."

Mark made an exasperated face and picked up Fortinbras. "You don't want a cat around when one of those things goes off because you're playing with them. I'll take Fort down to the common room for you." 

"Thanks," Luke said. He blew a kiss at Mark. Mark rolled his eyes and stepped out of the room, muttering to Fortinbras.

Luke sat up straight and Teddy sat down next to him, dropping the howlers on the low table. "Any ideas?"

Luke thought for a moment, then picked up one of the envelopes and opened it. Inside was a sheet of red paper. "How does it work?"

"You write your message on it, address it, and then send it. Once it's delivered, it shouts the message, bursts into flames, and that's it."

Luke blinked a couple of times, folded the paper back up, put it back in the envelope, and reached into his bag for a pen. He scrawled on the front of the envelope, 

Theodore "Weird Hair" Lupin  
The Swear-Chair Room, Hogwarts Castle  
England.

Luke sealed the envelope, then handed it to Teddy. "Here you go."

Teddy blinked a couple of times, then flinched. "It's working! The bloody things start heating up as soon as they're delivered. Ah..." He opened it, glaring at Luke.

The instant it was opened, the envelope flew from Teddy's hand, unfolding and refolding into a passable origami mouth, which opened wide, displaying its contents. It hovered for a moment, giving off an almost palpable aura of befuddlement. It frowned, said very quietly, "Um," and then burst into flames, and within moments it was nothing more than a pile of ash on the table.

Luke burst out laughing. "That's completely insane!" He giggled a bit more and then added, "and did you hear that? It was my voice."

"If we're going to use these," Teddy said, "we'll have to find a way to change the voice they use."

Luke thought for a moment. "I might have an idea about that."

Teddy raised an eyebrow. "You know a spell?"

Luke shook his head. "I think we'll need to find a typewriter. Have you ever heard of a typewritten howler?"

Teddy grinned. "Actually, I think they take the voice from the handwriting. That might be a good idea."

Luke nodded. "First, though, let's play with these a bit. How many do we have?"

"Thirteen," Teddy said.

Luke picked up the teacups from the corner of the room. He was in the middle of transfiguring a cup of water into rum when Violet came in.

"Where in the world did you get howlers?" she asked.

Teddy grinned. "I've got them," he said. "Isn't that enough?"

Violet grabbed the tea kettle, filled it, and started heating it up. "All right, I'll play. What are you doing with them? The minute you use one, you'll be caught."

"We're trying to figure a way around that," Luke said. He pulled his wand away from the cup and took an experimental sip. "That's starting to work!"

Teddy grabbed the cup and sipped. "Hey, that's not bad!" he held it up to Violet's lips, and she leaned forward and sipped. "Not bad, right?"

Violet nodded. "You're getting good at that, Luke. Watch out, or you'll turn into a lush."

Luke chuckled. The kettle started whistling, and Violet poured for them. 

Teddy picked up one of the howlers and started waving his wand at it, clearly not casting anything. Finally, he snapped out "Specialis Revelio," tapping the envelope with his wand. Nothing happened. He pulled out the paper itself, and tried again. 

The paper folded up and stuffed itself back into the envelope, then the whole thing rose up and formed into a mouth. It opened up and screamed at Teddy, very, very loudly, "And just what do you think you're doing! The enchantments on a howler are proprietary, owned wholly by Avery Products, LLC, and any attempt to learn how to replicate this letter is a crime! Shame on you, you scoundrel! I hope you go deaf from too many howlers!" it burst into flames, and after a few moments of silence, Violet snorted. 

"Well, now we know who makes them."

"Luke," Teddy said, rubbing at his ear, "could you cast that spell? I've got an idea."

Luke sighed and pulled another howler over in front of him. He tapped it. "Specialis Revelio."

The paper slid back into the envelope, and Teddy pointed his wand and snapped "Finite!"

The howler stopped moving, and Teddy smiled. He grabbed it and opened it up. It was covered in runes.

Luke leaned in close. "Oh, that's brilliant." He sipped his spiked tea and bent down to pull his Runes textbook out of his bag. 

"What's brilliant?" Violet said.

"They must have written the spells on it with runes and then cast a charm or used a potion to make them go invisible." Luke set his textbook down on the table and pointed. 

"Look. There's the rune for crime! And that's got to be the 'LLC', those are letter runes."

"Right," Teddy said. "And this part at the top must be the spells that make it work. That looks complicated."

Violet leaned over and peered at the paper. "This all looks like a bunch of nonsense to me."

"That's because you're not taking Runes," Luke replied. "You know, they used to be the only way to enchant objects. You had to use the runes, and then a spell to make them work."

Teddy and Luke kept working on the howlers, and Violet let out a disgusted sigh after a while and left them with a full kettle and advice not to get too smashed. Naturally, Luke and Teddy didn't do too well with following her advice. Mark popped in to check on their progress after an hour or two.

"Are you two drinking in here?"

Luke gave him a sloppy little grin. "You c'n feel free t' join us."

Mark shook his head. "I'll just let you be stupid in here by yourselves."

By the time curfew came around, "stupid" was probably a pretty good way to describe their condition. They were well on their way to figuring out what the spells were, but Teddy retained just enough sense to remember that it was time to get to their common rooms. Luke stuffed the howlers into his bag and made his way back to the Slytherin common rooms.

\------------------------

The next day, Luke woke up feeling utterly horrible. He made his slow way to the nearest bathroom and threw up. Phineas found him in there. 

"You had a bit of fun last night."

"Please don't make fun of me," Luke said. "I'm bloody miserable enough as it is."

Phineas waved his wand at Luke. Luke felt a little bit better, and then Phineas handed him a little bottle. "Drink that. It's not official, but the general policy here is that if they catch a student hung over, there's trouble."

Luke looked dubiously at the stuff in the bottle. It looked as though raw polyjuice potion had had a baby with beer. "This looks like it might kill me."

"You'll be fine. It tastes terrible, but it helps."

Luke shrugged, popped open the bottle, pinched his nose, and drained it. He felt better pretty much instantly. "Teddy needs some of this, too, I expect."

Phineas shook his head. "Why should I help your Ravenclaw friend?"

"Because I'll pay for the next bottle you get," Luke suggested. He had just enough money to do that, and Phineas nodded. 

"That'll work." He rooted around in his pockets and pulled out another bottle. Luke pocketed it and stood up. The toilet he'd spewed into flushed behind him. 

When Luke arrived in the Great Hall for breakfast looking chipper and happy, Teddy shot him a look that could have peeled paint. Luke pulled out the bottle Phineas had given him. "Drink up," he said.

Teddy drank, and grinned. "That works. What is it?"

"Probably something we can't make until seventh year," Luke said. Mark sat down next to him.

"Is my drunkard boyfriend feeling all right, then?"

Luke nodded. "Thanks for the concern, Mark."

"I thought you weren't going to drink except at night," Mark said irritably.

"Well, not all the time," Luke said. "I don't think there's any problem doing it once in a while. It feels good, and I need to feel good lately."

"Why?" Mark said. "You seem to be holding up pretty well."

Luke blinked. The fact was that he was doing remarkably well. He couldn't remember the last time he'd gone off on a quasi-reasonless crying jag over his mother. But on the other hand... "Why do you think that is, though?"

"Don't try to put your being all right on drinking," Mark said. "It doesn't work like that, my dad always says it's not like that."

Luke blanched a bit at the vehemence of Mark's objection. "All right," he said. "I'll cut back a bit, all right?"

"Good," Mark said. "I'd rather not be dating the school drunk." He attacked his breakfast with a special vigor, and Luke didn't try to start up any more conversation. That probably wouldn't end well.

\-----------------------

Two weeks later, Heironymous Runel received a letter.

It came by owl in a red envelope and landed on the table in front of him. Luke started giggling as a general sound of amused anticipation sounded from where most of the Slytherins were sitting. People started edging away from Runel, and he picked up the envelope, which was beginning to smoke, and opened it up. The envelope flew from his hands and screamed at him, "Shouting! Raagh!" and with that, it burst into flames and left behind only a pile of ashes and a very confused Slytherin.

Luke and Teddy both burst out laughing, and Mark giggled along with them. The rest of the Great Hall slowly joined in their laughter.

The howlers, once cracked, took a couple of days to modify, and the first couple of attempts had left them with a stock of only ten. They weren't going to waste them. Halloween's approach saw them working on their howlers, and hanging out at Hogsmeade together in the Hog's Head. The barman cheerfully gave them firewhiskey, whether because he didn't care that they were too young or because he was basically blind, Luke neither knew nor cared. Luke was better at the spell for activating runes, so the two howlers that they cracked before Halloween, he activated. 

Mark kept up on his disapproval of Luke's drinking, and couldn't be persuaded to drink himself, so Luke made it his own personal goal to get him to try it, just once. 

Teddy and Luke had plans for Halloween, and they set them up the night before, Teddy sneaking into the Great Hall, doing his best to look like Professor Flitwick. He had once been unable to make himself look like other people, but he could manage passable "impressions" of people with distinctive features now, and he flashed Luke the sign for success when they came in early for breakfast on Halloween. 

Professor Lynch usually came in late, and she didn't disappoint this time. She also didn't disappoint in another key area: she was wearing a hat, as she often did on Halloween.  
Nearly everyone was gathered in the Great Hall by the time the professor pulled out her chair and froze where she stood. Luke could see her lips moving, presumably as she muttered something unhappy, then bent to pick up the howler on her chair.

"You didn't," Marissa said as a gasp swept through the Great Hall.

"Well, she gave us detention," Teddy replied. "It's not as though she doesn't have something coming to her."

"Teddy!" Violet exclaimed. Professor Lynch held the howler away from her, as though it was something distasteful, and pulled it open.

It flew away from her hand, and in a very pronounced Swedish accent, speaking with a woman's voice, it screeched "I like your hat! It's very stylish! It matches your robe perfectly! You simply must tell me where you got it!"

"Oh my god," Violet giggled as the howler burst into flames. "It still sounds angry!"

The Great Hall had erupted into laughter again, and Luke grinned. "It likes her hat, but it's not happy about it."

Mark had collapsed into a gale of cackling, apparently quite tickled by the joke, and Luke grinned sidelong at him. 

Professor Flitwick stood up when the laughter had died down a bit and called out "I would like to remind all students that howlers are not allowed in Hogwarts, and if this turns out to be the work of a student, the perpetrator will be punished!" The impact of his warning was rather undercut by the fact that Professor Shelly was laughing her head off with nearly the same volume as Mark.

\------------------------

"Are you ready, Luke?"

Luke adjusted his jacket a bit and then stepped out of Hogwarts and into the rain. Hogsmeade again, and this time, they were going to the Three Broomsticks. Mark seemed rather excited about it. Apparently, it was where his parents had met. He was gamboling about in the rain, letting it soak him.

"You're going to feel like a drowned rat in twenty minutes," Luke pointed out.

Mark chuckled. "I feel great now, though. It's almost as good as snow. Come on, Luke."

Luke followed Mark, and Mark toned his energy down about a quarter of a notch, splashing along through the puddles on the path beside Luke. He leaned over and planted one of the wettest kisses Luke had ever received on his cheek. Luke couldn't help grinning at that. Mark might be strange and awkward, but he was lovable and sweet, too. They held hands and pushed their way through the rain, and by the time they walked into Hogsmeade Village, Mark's enthusiasm was beginning to catch. Luke had even taken a moment to splash in a puddle, after a bit of persuading by Mark. They were, of course, both soaked, and they huddled their way into the Three Broomsticks only to find a couple dozen other students in various levels of dampness. One table in particular had a puddle forming under it.

Mark looked around the pub, spotted a table near a window, and immediately made a beeline for it. Luke hurried after him and they both sat, next to each other, since the chairs at the Three Broomsticks allowed that, instead of forcing couples to sit directly across from each other. The rain tapped an irregular tattoo against the window, and Mark looked out at it. "It's going to be muddy on the way back."

Luke nodded. "Muddy and cold. I don't know about you, but I plan to stay here a while. Maybe we can nip off to the Hog's Head for a little bit. It's been a while."

Mark glared at him. "I thought you drank yourself to sleep every night."

"Not a while since I had a drink. A while since I had... you know, you."

Mark blushed. "Oh. Yeah. That might be fun. But why the Hog's Head?"

"Because Aberforth will let you get away with anything. And he'll rent out that room above by the hour."

Mark's blush intensified, but before he could make a reply, flirtatious or otherwise, Madam Rosmerta, the owner of the Three Broomsticks, arrived. She was an old woman, but only by the barest margin. A slight widening of the body, a few wrinkles on the face, grey hair, but for all that, obviously a beautiful woman. She moved like she knew it, too. "Can I take your orders, boys?"

Luke nodded. "I'll have a butterbeer. Oh, and a plate of your appetizers."

"Hot chocolate for me," Mark said. "With a bit of peppermint."

Madam Rosmerta smiled and wrote their orders down, and as she strutted to the kitchen to get her chef (by all accounts, a small team of house elves) on it, Mark and Luke both took a moment to watch her go.

"She must have been amazing when she was younger," Luke said.

"I hear Teddy's father had a serious crush on her for a while."

"I hear Ron Weasley had a serious crush on her."

Mark chuckled. "You know, we're going to start getting all sorts of Weasleys around the school pretty soon."

"Well, if they're all as nice as Victoire, that won't be bad," Luke said. "Have you seen the way she looks at Teddy?" Mark shook his head. Luke smiled. "She thinks he's the greatest thing since sliced bread. If Violet hadn't staked her claim already, Victoire would be hanging off of Teddy's arm at all times."

Mark's eyebrows went for the summit. "Really? I'll have to pay closer attention."

"Oh no, you don't," Luke said. "Your attempts at unobtrusive observation would not be subtle enough to escape the notice of an eleven year old girl."

Madam Rosmerta returned with the food and drinks, and Mark took a swig of hot chocolate, then leaned over and kissed Luke full on the lips. It was peppermint-and-chocolate flavored. Luke laughed, and they got down to the appetizer plate. 

By the end of the plate, Luke was on his third butterbeer--the stuff was delicious, like eggnog you could drink whenever you felt like it--and actually feeling a tiny bit of the effect of the stuff. Not much, just enough to feel a little underinhibited.

He leaned back in his chair and sighed. "I like this place."

Mark grinned. "It's good."

Madam Rosmerta came back as Luke was draining his butterbeer, and she quirked up an eyebrow at him. He shook his head, she told him the price, and he and Mark pooled their money and paid.

Luke looked out the window. He'd hardly noticed the weather, but it had been changing, and now was a sullen mix of snow and rain. It wasn't sticking, but from the look of things, there would be slush on the way back to Hogwarts. 

Luke stood up and offered his hand to Mark, and Mark grinned as he took it. They headed out, and Luke led Mark to the Hog's head. It was just as full of dripping students as the Three Broomsticks, but there were also other people mixed in, and while the three Broomsticks was full of Slytherins and Hufflepuffs, with a scattering of Ravenclaw and Gryffindor, the opposite was true of the Hog's Head. Luke headed up to the barman and rented one of the two upper rooms for two hours. The old man winked at him. "Try not to have too much fun up there."

Luke shrugged. "We'll just be playing Exploding Snap."

The barman laughed. Luke pulled Mark after him and up the stairs to the room he'd rented.

\-----------------------

"So where did the howlers come from?" Mark asked, curling up by Luke's side.

Luke snuggled up to him and looked at the window. The rain was slowly diminishing, replaced by snow, but it still looked pretty ugly outside. "I really don't know, but I've got the feeling Teddy might have nicked them from Professor Lynch."

"Luke!" Mark said.

Luke reclined and scooted along the (surprisingly nice) bed so that he was face-to-face with Mark. "She would have used them to be horrible to people. That's what they're for, Mark. All right, so it's theft, but it's the absolute pettiest theft imaginable, and we're using them to make the world a little happier, a little funnier."

"But they're still stolen!"

Luke bit his lip to keep from smiling. "If it makes you feel any better, the real crime is that we've altered them. Apparently, that's not allowed."

"Of course not," Mark said, "but that's not bad. You're not trying to launch a competitor that does the same thing for half the price." He sighed. "The problem is that they're stolen."  
"I'll talk to Teddy about it," Luke said, "but we've already cracked them all by now, and they've got different accents, and I wouldn't want to give them back. Professor Leiman could probably figure out who had cracked them if he had access to them, and then Teddy and I would be in trouble."

"If you get caught with them, you'll be in trouble anyway," Mark said. "I think you ought to get rid of them. Destroy them."

Luke blinked. "But we're having fun, and we've only got eight of them left. We'll send them off quick, all right? One every couple of days? Make everyone's November and December a bit more surreal?"

Mark grinned at that. He was a dadaist at heart, and Luke knew he could appeal to the side of Mark that liked strangeness for the sake of strangeness. "You should make them sing. If you could get them to harmonize..."

Luke laughed. "If we could get them to harmonize, that would be perfect." He reached for Mark, and pulled him closer. "Mark, you're a genius."

"Well, if you insist," Mark said.

\-----------------------

Teddy thought the idea was right on the borderline between brilliant and insane, and he insisted on keeping a couple of the howlers out of it, as well as writing the song they would harmonize on. Violet cooperated enthusiastically on that project, and the three of them spent more than one drunken night over a pen and paper, swapping verses and researching spells. Luke found a charm that would make a guitar play, and with the help of Phineas Chenner, he set about altering it, which meant more drunken nights playing with magic. Luke managed to cover a bottle of vodka in feathers one night, and he took it back to the dormitory to display. It was very bright and colorful, a sort of accidental art project.

They had four howlers left over from the project, and Violet used one of them. It was waiting on Hagrid's chair for him, and he picked it up and smiled like he'd been given an early birthday present. Apparently, Hagrid thought the howler pranks were great. He opened it up, very businesslike, smiling a little broader as it flew away from his hands and started belting out the angriest-sounding rendition of "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" Luke had ever been priveleged to hear. Mark started laughing, and Violet sketched a very subtle bow in his direction. While the off-key singing--it sounded a bit like Mick Jagger--continued, Luke said, "that's beautiful, Violet."

She laughed. "I'm glad you like it. I thought about doing a bunch of Star Wars quotes, but mum would have caught on."

Luke grinned. "Don't be too proud of this magical terror you've constructed, Hagrid. The power to grow unrealistically large pumpkins is insignificant next to the power of the Force."

Violet shook her head. "More along the lines of 'you are to be thrown into the belly of the great Sarlaac, where you will be slowly digested over a thousand years.'"

"As long as you weren't going to call him a walking carpet," Luke said.

"Do, or do not. There is no try," Marissa put in.

Luke and Violet both turned to stare at her.

"What was that?" Teddy said.

Luke started applauding. "You've learned some pop culture! Marissa, you're beautiful!"

Flitwick stood up and cleared his throat once Hagrid's howler was done. This time, he was clearly trying not to laugh. "Once again, I would like to remind everyone that howlers are not permitted at Hogwarts! When they are caught, the culprits will lose ten house points for every howler that was sent!" He jumped down from his chair and almost made it out of the Great Hall before he started laughing.

\------------------------

Professor Leiman must have noticed the League talking calmly through the most recent howler, because he called Luke in to his office after Potions that day.

"Luke, take a seat," he said, pulling a well-used knife out of somewhere and starting to polish the blade. 

Luke sat down. "If this is about the latest essay--"

"Luke, you wouldn't happen to know anything about those howlers, would you?"

Luke's mouth formed a perfect little "o", and he shook his head.

"I thought so," Professor Leiman said. "I imagine they work with runes. Seems like the way I would do it."

"Uh," Luke said. "I imagine so."

"Hm," Professor Leiman said. "It must take some doing to get them to sing. And of course, you'd be caught instantly if it used your voice. That's some excellent rune work, Luke."

Luke almost objected that it was mostly Teddy, but he managed to squeak out, "Yes, whoever is doing it must be very proud of themself," instead.

"Of course, I'd be investigating it more thoroughly," Professor Leiman said, "but I've been so busy lately, and you haven't done anything really rude to anyone yet. As long as it's amusing instead of mean-spirited, I suppose I'll let you slide by. You might wish to inform my granddaughter."

Luke blushed. "I doubt Violet has anything to do with it, either."

"Oh, nonsense," Professor Leiman said. "At least that last one was her idea. You might try changing the shape they turn to. It would be sort of interesting to see. Oh, and don't swear in them. I will have to turn you in if you swear. You can go now."

"Th-thank you, sir," Luke said.

\-----------------------

The next prank didn't come around for about a week, and December snuck up on Hogwarts in the meantime. Luke and Teddy had spent quite a while researching spells, and they wound up ruining a howler before they managed to make it work right, and that only in theory.

Still, the next prank did come around eventually, and it was a hell of a prank. They chose their victim carefully, and for maximum effect. The morning of December first saw Professor Flitwick picking up a howler from his chair and looking as though he'd swallowed a lemon whole. The Great Hall fell completely silent. Someone coughed as the howler started smoking.

Professor Flitwick slit the howler open with a deft swipe of his wand, and out shot a burst of confetti and a bright red paper dragon, somewhat crude but still recognizable and therefore somewhat spectacular. The dragon roared, spat more confetti around the room, and spread its wings. It was halfway to the exit before it burst into flames, and Professor Flitwick was on his feet and applauding, obviously well before he could rein himself in. The rest of the Great Hall seemed to take that as a sign that it was all right to applaud as well, and while Professor Flitwick was slowly settling back into his chair, the applause swept around the room. It was one hell of an ego boost.

"All right, I have to admit that that was a good one," Marissa said, leaning over to talk to Luke. "Of course, now you'll have to top it."

Someone let out a loud, piercing whistle, and Luke grinned. "Glad you think so. The next one probably won't top it, but the last one will."

There was a thunderclap from the general direction of the staff table, and it was a testament to just how much chaos the howler had generated that it took a second thunderclap to quiet everyone down. Professor Flitwick stood up on his chair and pointed his wand at his throat.

"Right!" He said. "However artistic your pranks are, they are still not permitted at Hogwarts! Whoever is sending these howlers is disrupting our otherwise peaceful breakfast, and they will be punished!" He sat back down in a huff, looking a bit conflicted, and very cross at having to try to stop the perpetrators of the howler campaign. Luke had to wonder if he was trying all that hard.

"I don't see why he doesn't just lift the ban," Marissa said.

"If he did, then people would start sending angry howlers, too," Mark said. "And the upper year students are always having fights and breakups and that sort of thing. Would you want to eat in here with everyone past the fifth year sending a howler every other week? It would be so loud you'd go deaf."

"Probably what happened to make them ban the things in the first place," Luke said.

"I heard it was because someone cracked into one and made it start biting people," Teddy said. He held out his arm, the hand temporarily gone. "Can you imagine? 'what happened to you?' 'I got a papercut.'" His hand grew back, and he shrugged. "That's an odd feeling."

"That story is just a rumor, Teddy," Violet said. "You saw the safety spells on them. You were complaining about them.

"But they can't have always been there," Teddy objected.

"That's true," Luke said. "I'd hardly expect the culture that came up with the bludger to be so safety-conscious that they put safety charms on a howler without someone turning it into a weapon first."

"They banned them because they got really popular all at once and it got impossible to think straight at breakfast and lunch," Marissa said. "I asked Professor Gills."

"And you trusted what he said?" Mark said incredulously.

"Well, he wasn't talking about Luke, so I thought it might be all right."

They went back and forth for the rest of breakfast about which explanation was more likely. Luke suspected that it was actually a combination of the two. 

Nothing particularly exciting happened for most of the morning, and it seemed as though it was going to be an average day, punctuated only by a vague sense of smug satisfaction from hearing people talking about the dragon howler, until Divination.

Mark had been managing all right, although he was constantly distracted in the incense-and-burnt-herbs atmosphere of the classroom. They were doing palm reading, which was a surprisingly complex affair, with the motions, condition, lines, and everything else about the hand playing a role. Luke was counting the lines radiating away from Mark's thumb when Mark stiffened. Luke looked up.

"Oh, no," he said.

Mark's hands thudded down onto the table. Everyone nearby turned to look at him, fully expecting another incident. His eyes had gone blank, and nearly rolled back in their sockets so far the irises couldn't be seen anymore. He sat, bolt upright, hands palm-down on the table, nearly-pupilless eyes fixed unseeingly on Luke.

Across the room, Professor Trelawney swung around to stare at Mark, and she started hurrying over, but she was too late to do anything.

Mark began to speak. His voice was wrong, with harmonies and inflections he didn't have, and he sounded like he was trying not to speak, but couldn't help speaking anyways. Professor Trelawney froze halfway to him.

"The time is coming," Mark grated out. "The time is coming, and soon, when he will know his own sorrow, when that which he has done will be done to him. The time is coming when his life will be laid down as they laid down their lives against him, when he will know the joy he ripped from them. The time is coming when he will leave this world again. The time is coming." Mark twitched, his whole body spasming once, and then again, and finally going slack so completely, and so suddenly, that his head smacked into the table, hard, and he fell half out of his chair before his body started responding again and he caught himself.

The fall was already started, and he couldn't pull himself back up. All he could do was to fall, gracelessly, although at least not painfully, to the floor, slowing himself only by the barest margin so that he didn't land too painfully. He looked around, bewildered and wide-eyed. "What just happened?"

Professor Trelawney finished her aborted run to Mark's side and pulled him up as people began whispering. "You've just had an episode," Professor Trelawney said. "You made a prophecy, Mark. Restimen, help me get him down the stairs."

Luke jumped up and helped Trelawney to get the unsteady Hufflepuff down the stairs and into the corridor a few floors down. Mark sank against the wall, trembling. "I feel worse   
than I did after the first lesson," he said.

"I think you should stop," Luke said. "I think you ought to drop Divinations right now."

"Mister Restimen!" Professor Trelawney exclaimed. "Where is your sense of curiosity? Do you not want to see what your friend--"

"My curiosity is being overshadowed by my common sense!" Luke shouted. "If Mark is in danger from your subject, he ought to quit right now!"

"Mister Restimen!" Trelawney snapped. "You will not raise your voice to me! It is clear that Mark posseses the Inner Eye, and to prevent a true Seer from practicing his calling is a grave error."

"So is letting one of your students--"

"Stop!" Mark shouted. Trelawney and Luke both turned and stared at him. He blushed, and when he spoke again, he did so nervously and with a tiny stutter. "I-I want to keep... keep going. If Professor Trelawney is right, then I need to be able to use this. Or at least, maybe I can control it."

"Mark," Luke said, "You've just proven that you can't."

Mark glared at him, then hauled himself to his feet, turned on his heel, and marched off towards the stairs. Luke chased after him. "Mark!"

Mark whirled around. "I can control it! And if you think I can't, then you can go and be rude to someone else! I suggest a hippogriff!" The look on his face was one of undiluted anger, a look Luke had only ever seen directed at Heironymous Runel. Luke backed off a step.

"Mark," he said, but Mark had already turned again and was headed away, up the stairs, towards the classroom.

"Oh, bloody hell," Luke muttered.

Professor Trelawney swept past him, and Luke took a deep breath. 

\------------------------

That evening, in the swear-chair room, Luke sat with Teddy, working on the howlers. The next one was nearly ready, and it was all down to the project with the last four. Fortinbras was curled up at Luke's feet, and a cup of spiked tea sat on the table in easy reach. Luke should have been comfortable. Instead, he couldn't stop worrying.

"He's not going to dump you just because you said something stupid," Teddy said, the fourth or fifth time he'd expounded on that particular theme. "This is Mark we're talking about. He's not that kind of person. He'll forgive you, he just needs time." Teddy's hair went brown as he thought. "And I expect he's worried, too, especially if someone told him what exactly he said. It wasn't exactly the most comforting prediction I've ever heard."

"What do you suppose it meant?" Luke said.

"You know, honestly, it sounded like it might have been talking about Voldemort." Teddy said. "I'd watch out if I were you. It does sort of make sense that you would be in danger. The Death Eaters have banded back together, and I doubt they're fond of you right now. You might end up fighting your own little personal war with them if you're not careful."

"I'd rather hide," Luke said. "Voldemort fought, but not me. I'm just Luke Restimen. They've done something completely horrible to me already, and I don't want to tangle with them. I just want to be safe, and live a nice, normal life. Two and a half kids, picket fence, dog with a stupid name, the works."

"Where are you going to get kids if you're with Mark?" Teddy asked.

"We'll adopt," Luke said. "That way, we can make sure we don't get any ugly ones."

Teddy rolled his eyes. "Of course you have a solution for that."

Luke picked up one of the sheets of paper they were using for howler stand-ins and altered a few runes, then activated it. It started playing a piece of music, and slowly burning up, the notes going sour as it went. That was progress from the last one, which had exploded with a sound like a violin having a fistfight with an oboe. "I really hope that prediction wasn't about me," Luke said as the paper wailed the last few notes. "I'd hate to have all of that happen. I've had enough trouble. Can't I just go back to normal?"

"How often does normal really happen, though?" Teddy asked pointedly. "It seems to me like normal might be pretty abnormal." As though to illustrate the point, he turned his hair bright red as he spoke, and his eyes shifted to a sort of electric purple color. "I wouldn't worry too much about normal, mate. Try for happy. It's a lot better, the way I hear."

\---------------------

The next day, at breakfast, Luke was a touch hung over, but the project was much closer to finished, and there was a howler ready to be delivered.

Mark sat down next to Luke. "Are you ready to apologize?"

Luke nodded. He looked at the others, Teddy and Violet deep in conversation, Marissa just sitting down. "Of course I am," he said, quietly enough not to be overheard. "I was ready to apologize the minute I said it. I'm sorry, Mark, and I really regret saying that to you. It was a horrible, mean thing to say."

Mark sighed. "You were worried about me. I understand. And I forgive you. If it gets any worse, I'll drop the class."

Luke leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. "All right. I love you, Mark."

"I love you too, Luke," Mark said. He probably would have gone on, but whatever he was thinking was derailed by the arrival of the morning's owls. Luke pointed towards Eloise Parker, and Mark turned just in time to see the howler delivered to her. "You sent one to Parker?" he said.

Luke grinned. "Wait for it," he said.

Eloise opened up her howler, and it unfolded into a standard mouth and started talking in a flat, but very loud, monotone.

"Roses are red, violets are blue,  
sugar is sweet, but what about you?  
Coffee is hot, and ice cream is cold,  
rabbits are meek, but lions are bold,  
elephants are large, mice are quite small,  
children rush through and the government stalls,  
graveyards are spooky, gardens are bright,  
fish like to swim and birds enjoy flight,  
potions are hard, charms class is easy,  
candy is good, but too much makes you queasy,  
Hufflepuff's loyal, Ravenclaw's smart,  
Slytherin's sly, Gryffindors have heart,  
snakes have no legs, centipedes have lots,  
horses have four, boggarts do not,  
giants are bigger, but goblins are short,  
chefs are quite skilled, and they like to make tortes,  
cookies are tasty, lemons are sour,  
I could go on for hours and hours,  
paper is light, wood can be burned,  
this is your howler, this is your turn,  
the next one is better, so you should stick around,  
we're working on something to make us all proud,  
one final joke will make you all laugh,  
a four-in-one howler, you don't want to miss that."

Professor Flitwick didn't even bother scolding this time. Luke saw him shaking his head and turning to talk to Professor Shelly.

"How long did that take you to write?" Mark asked.

"It took us a couple of hours," Teddy said, "but it was a lot of fun. We were going to make it insult her outright, but Luke said Professor Leiman would bother to catch us if we did."

"I almost went with just having it do the first two lines and say it was from Phineas," Luke said. "I thought maybe Professor Leiman wouldn't like that very much, either. So we used it to advertise, instead."

Mark grinned. "Well, I think you did a good job. They're talking."

And they were definitely talking. Over the next few days, what the pranksters had come up with to top the dragon was among the top topics of conversation. Anyone who passed the swear-chair room after classes probably heard hints of what it might be, but there was no way to piece it all together. The excitement slowly died down, and people started talking about other things. Plans were being made for the Christmas break, invitations to parties were being passed around, and there was a sudden influx of alcohol if one knew where to look for it.

Luke knew where to look.

\------------------------

On the last Hogsmeade weekend before the break, he went out with Mark and they went to the Hog's Head. Luke ordered a firewhiskey-spiked eggnog (the combination sounded horrendous, but the overall effect was like heavily-spiced eggnog with a sour edge, and surprisingly good), and Mark got a butterbeer.

"Come on, Mark," Luke said when the barman delivered their drinks. "Just try it."

Mark rolled his eyes and picked up Luke's drink. He sipped, and made a face. "No thank you. I'll stick to butterbeer." He washed the taste of the eggnog out of his mouth with a long swig of his butterbeer. "So what are you doing for the last howler?"

"Not telling," Luke said. He drank some more of his eggnog and added, "But it's going to be spectacular. We got Harry Lemuel to write music for us."

"Does he know what he was writing for?"

Luke shook his head. "He doesn't know. He might have a shrewd guess, but he's a Ravenclaw, so if he tells who it was, his house loses a ton of points. It's pretty good insurance."

"It sounds a lot like blackmail," Mark said.

"If it was blackmail, we'd have got something more out of it. It's just insurance." Luke drank more of his eggnog and smiled across the table at Mark. "And it's for a good cause. Think how great the last one is going to be."

"The way you're talking, it's going to solve all the world's problems." Mark grinned. "Three cheers for Minister Howler, first nonhuman to make Minister of Magic."

"His policies on shouting were controversial, but after a week of everyone screaming all the time, the entire population of England lost their voices, and everyone had the peace and quiet to finally do some bloody reading," Luke said over another swallow of his drink. "World peace wasn't far behind."

"Of course, he was felled by a scandal later when it turned out he'd been having an affair with his paperwork," Mark said. "His wife was devestated, and crumpled herself up in a ball and threw herself in the trash. Like all politicians, the skeletons in his closet came back to haunt him eventually, and he couldn't take the pressure anymore. He resigned in disgrace."

"And his poor children went on to become religious tracts and tabloid magazines," Luke said, putting a last little bit of polish on the joke. "So much potential," he drained his cup, "wasted." He waved in the general direction of the bar, and after a few moments, the barman appeared. Luke held up his cup. "'nother one?"

The old man nodded and went away. 

"Pace yourself, Luke," Mark said.

Luke nodded. "Of course, Mark."

\-------------------------

He didn't pace himself. By the end of the evening, Luke was belting out an off-key rendition of Werewolves of London while Mark supported him on the way back to the castle. At some point, either drink number three or number four, Phineas had come by and bought Luke a "Christmas shot" of straight firewhiskey, and after that, what had been a pleasant drunk had slowly transfigured into a roaring one.

Mark had gotten Phineas to leave only with a lot of persuading and dirty looks, but the damage was done, and Luke leaned on Mark's shoulders while Mark tried his damnedest to tolerate Luke's singing. It was dark and snowy, and Mark had his hat pulled low over his ears to muffle the sound. As soon as they got into the castle, he spotted Marissa sitting in the entrance hall and waved to her. She came over, and Mark handed Luke off to her.

"Take this before I cram its wand down its throat," Mark said.

"Has he been like this all night?" Marissa asked.

Mark shook his head. "No. Phineas Chenner came around and started buying him drinks. He was drinking too much already, but it wasn't this bad yet."

"Oh, c'mon, Mark," Luke said. "This isn' bad. I'm jus' a li'l... exuberant."

Mark glared at him. "Don't. I'm cross enough already."

Luke blinked. "Yer mad 't me?"

"Yes," Mark snapped. "Marissa is going to take you to your common room. Try not to throw up on her." He transferred Luke over to Marissa, then turned and huffed away, off towards the Hufflepuff common room.

"All right, lushy," Marissa said. "Let's get you out of here." She led him off towards the Slytherin common room, and walked him into the third year boys' dormitory. His bed was easy enough to find. It was the one with the cat on it. She eased him back onto it, and Luke smiled at her. 

"Thanks f'r the h'lp, M'rissa." He looked contemplative for a moment. "You migh' wanna move," he added, very quietly.

She stepped back, just barely in time to avoid getting thrown up on. She rolled her eyes, pulled out her wand, and started working on tending to Luke until he fell asleep.

\---------------------------

The next day, Luke had to be told about the vomit incident. He had the vague impression of having left the Hog's Head with a somewhat cross Mark, but the next thing he knew, he had woken up in his bed, crushingly miserable and feeling a pressing need to run for the nearest bathroom. He hadn't made it.

Mark wasn't happy at all. In fact, he was furious. It didn't help at all that Luke didn't feel capable of moving until noon. At least once he was able to move, he was able to get some of the hangover-curing potion from Phineas, but that just seemed to make Mark angrier.

"You're never going to learn from this sort of... this sort of... of shit if you just take a bloody potion and it goes away! You ought to be suffering right now, and you're not, and you think that means that everything is all right, but it's not!" Mark hadn't stopped yelling since Luke told him about the hangover-curing potion. "You completely ruined our date last night! Completely! I've never been so embarrassed in my life!"

Luke's face was about as flushed as it had ever been. The scar across his forehead from the car crash, normally visible only after a few moments of inspection, was a clear white line. He was very glad that Mark had chosen to have this conversation in the swear-chair room instead of the Great Hall or somewhere else where a lot of people might hear it. He felt awful, but at least he felt awful in private. "I'm so sorry, Mark," he said. "I promise, I'll never do it again. I'm going to try to cut back, I won't risk doing that to you again."

"You had better not," Mark said. "And one more thing. I don't want you to drink with Phineas anymore. He's the one that got you to that point, and you're liable to get alcohol poisoning if you keep drinking with him."

Luke frowned. For all that Phineas had been a casual-to-distant acquaintance at the beginning of the year, he had grown into a friend, and admittedly, he was a friend that Luke mostly spoke to over drinks, but he was still a friend. But, to keep Mark, he would do a lot more than just stop drinking with Phineas. "All right," Luke said. 

Mark stood up. "I don't particularly want to be with you right now, so I'm just going to go and spend the day on my own. I've got some reading I want to do, anyways." He left the room, and Luke was left with the distinct feeling that he'd just received the human equivalent of a howler. 

After a couple of minutes, Teddy came in, ginger-haired and quiet. He sat down. "Hello, Luke." He looked down at his feet for a minute. "Mark didn't seem to want to talk to me. How are--"

"He didn't dump me, if that's what you're asking," Luke said. "But he's really angry. I guess I would be, too, if I was him."

"Well, you were pretty smashed last night," Teddy said. "I would have been annoyed, too." He sat down next to Luke and got out a pocket board game. "Come on. Let's play."

Luke stared at the game as Teddy unfolded it. "I don't really feel like it right now, Teddy."

"That's bull and you know it, Luke." Teddy pointed to the game board. "You always have fun playing these games, and it'll take your mind off of Mark, which is what you need right now. If you keep thinking about him, you'll just keep feeling guilty, and maybe that's what he wants, but it's not good for you. You feel guilty enough about enough things already."

Teddy didn't wander into dime-store psychoanalysis very often, but he seemed to know his friends pretty well, so, whether he wanted to or not, Luke joined in, and while he wasn't exactly happy by the end of the day, he at least felt better. He had his nightly cups of spiked tea and went to bed, and he managed not to dream Voldemort's life.

\----------------------

It took almost the entire week for Mark to stop being angry, and even then, he wasn't exactly happy with Luke. Luke made a point of not talking about drinking anywhere near Mark, and Teddy seemed to agree that that was a good idea. Teddy persuaded Violet of the same thing, and so Luke's life got a little compartmentalized. There was the part with Mark, where he was sober and sweet, and there was the part with Violet and Teddy, where he drank and got rowdy.

He tried not to drink too much, but that was harder than it seemed, and he couldn't always manage it. Mark knew that he still drank, but he didn't seem to object too much, so Luke kept things as they were. 

The day before they left for the Christmas break came around, and Luke and Teddy put the project into action.

Mark was sitting next to Luke, Violet next to Teddy, and Marissa had just sat down when Professor Leiman sat at his chair and picked up a particularly fat red envelope. He cast an irritable look in the general direction of the League, and then he opened up the howler with a great deal of ceremony. First, one red sheet flew out and folded itself into a drum. It started sounding a steady beat, cheerful and fast, with only a bit of embellishment.

Next came a sheet that folded itself into a guitar, strumming a cheery tune and floating around the drum. Third was a little red grand piano, tinkling out a melody, and then out came the centerpiece.

The mouth was almost a standard howler mouth, but the lips were just a little too perfect, the shape a bit too pretty. It spoke with a clipped Liverpool accent.

"All right, everybody all together now! One, two, three, four!"

It opened wide and started singing.

"Well, the lake is cold,  
and the castle's old,  
and the teachers oh so strict!  
And every class in first year  
is one you'd not have picked!

But everybody knows  
this is where you go  
to earn your learnin' and the things you know!

Oh, the houses fight  
and the ghosts might bite,  
and Flitwick's completely mad!  
But hold us up to Durmstrang,   
and we don't seem half as bad, 

'cause everybody knows  
that this is where you go,  
to earn your wings and the things you know!

Well, we're not all smart,  
but we do our part,  
unless we get too lazy!  
And sometimes being here  
can drive you a little crazy!

But everybody knows  
that this is where you go  
to earn your learnin' and the things you know!

Yes, the quidditch pitch  
will give you an itch,   
and every year someone's injured!  
In potions class, they ride your... ahem... butt,  
and the essays will break your fingers,

but everybody knows  
this is where you go  
to earn your wings and the things you know!

Yes, everybody knows,  
to Hogwarts you must go,  
to earn your learning and the things you know!"

By the second verse, Flitwick was clapping along to the rhythm. He hesitated for a moment at "Flitwick's completely mad," but apparently, he decided that he was all right with a bit of deprecating humor, and he kept right along, and even sang the refrain a couple of times. A lot of people joined in on the refrain, in fact, and there were some noises of disappointment when the three little instruments burst into flames. The mouth wasn't done yet. It turned to address the Great Hall in general and said, very loudly, "Thank you, Hogwarts! We've enjoyed having you, you're a wonderful audience, and we really ought to do this all again sometime!" Then it turned towards Runel and screamed, rather than merely shouting, "Yelling! Raagh!" And with that, it burst into flames and was gone.

There were a few moments of silence, and then someone started laughing, and someone else started laughing, and next to Luke, Mark started laughing, and that set Teddy off, and they set off Marissa and Violet, and Luke started laughing even harder than he had been when he saw Professor Flitwick applauding, standing up on his chair, once Flitwick started to applaud, the rest of the teachers followed suit, and breakfast had to be extended out because no one had eaten much for too long, and if they'd kept it at the regular limit, everyone would have been starving by the time they got to lunch, instead of merely being hungry.

Mark chatted excitedly to Luke about the stunt on the way out of the Great Hall, but all he really had time to say before he went off to Herbology was "That was really great, Luke," followed by about a half-dozen variations on the same theme. Luke kissed him at the doors to the entrance hall, and they went off their separate ways. 

Violet, on the other hand, had plenty of opportunity to rave about it. "Who wrote the song?"

"Me and Teddy both," Luke said. "It took us a couple of days to get it right, but I think we did pretty well." He smiled smugly. "We got Harry Lemuel, you know, from sixth year, to write the music. The hardest part was charming them to go off in the right order, at the right times, and then burn up on cue. We lost more of our experimenting sheets that way..."

"Well," Marissa said, "I thought that it was great. And did you see Flitwick clapping along? He didn't even care that you called him mental."

"Well, it was all in good fun," Luke said. He walked up to the door of the Charms classroom, and put a finger to his lips. Violet and Marissa took his cue and didn't try to keep talking about it, and that was a good thing, because Professor Gills looked more than a bit cross about the whole thing. As soon as he got up in front of the class, he started talking about it.

"I hope you all are not thinking of imitating our resident pranksters. They have broken the rules, and they have disrupted classes today, completely upsetting the schedule that we were supposed to follow." That was only technically true. Classes had been pushed back, but each one was set to be exactly as long as it normally would have been, so the only disruption was that everyone lost a little bit of free time in the afternoon. "I would like to remind you all, especially my Slytherin students, that the rules exist for a reason, and refusing to follow them merely for the sake of a joke is eminently foolish. The recent pranks with howlers were harmless, but any one of them could have gone quite wrong, and someone might have been injured. If the culprits are caught, I sincerely hope that they will learn the lesson from their punishment that they failed to learn in the course of their upbringing. Now, please open your textbooks to page one hundred and twelve and read along as we learn about the hardening charm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really want to play with howlers. i would do so many weird, surreal things with them.


	4. Griselda Gripling's Grand Old Rum

The next day, all the students who were leaving for the holiday got up early. Professor Leiman had advised Luke to stay at Hogwarts over the break, but all of Luke's friends were going home, and he didn't want to be stuck at Hogwarts all by himself. When Professor Leiman heard that Luke was adamant about going home for Christmas, he had let out a long-suffering sigh and announced that he would be riding the train as well.

Mark, at least, seemed to be happy about it. Luke had been getting worried that he had broken his relationship with Mark, but now that they were headed out to Hogsmeade Station on the thestral-drawn carriages, Mark was leaning on him as though they wouldn't see each other for a year, rather than a couple of days. 

"I can't wait for Christmas," he said. "It's going to be the first time we all get together for it. Aren't you excited, Luke?"

Luke nodded and snuggled Mark up a little closer to his side. The carriage they had chosen was in worse repair than most, and a draft was letting cold air in, cutting through the too-light clothes they were all wearing. Teddy started to cast a heating charm, and Violet pushed his wand down and held out her hand. A ball of flames wreathed her hand and started giving off a steady, comfortable heat. Marissa leaned a little closer to it and held out her hands to warm them up.

"I'm just glad I'll get to host again," Teddy said. "I like having people at my house. Grandma is nice, but it's just me and Luke most of the time if I want to talk about something besides... I don't know... drapes."

"Your grandmother has never once tried to talk to me about drapes," Luke said. "Granted, there was that one time we talked about the wallpaper, but I'm the one that started that conversation."

"You mean that wallpaper in the family room?" Violet said, her fireball flickering higher for a moment before she darted her eyes back to it. "I like that wallpaper. Those little animals are so cute!"

"I think it's a bit garish," Teddy said.

"It is not," Luke replied. "It's just a little busy. And if you slap the wall just right, you can start a stampede."

Marissa blinked. "All right, obviously I've got to see this wallpaper."

"It's great," Luke said. "I'll show you how to start a stampede."

The carriage lurched to a stop and Luke looked out the window. At first he could barely see for the glare on the glass, but then Violet put out her fireball. 

The cold morning daylight picked out all the details on the Hogwarts Express. Looking at it without knowing what it had been through at the end of the previous year, it probably would have been virtually impossible to tell that it had ever been damaged. But Luke knew. This was a train that, mere months ago, had been on its side, beside a track, crumpled and broken. He'd seen the photographs in the Daily Prophet. The Hogwarts Express had been a wreck.

Now... Now it was gleaming, redder than the day it was built, with a fresh coat of bright crimson paint, the Hogwarts crest standing proudly out on its side, and at first glance, it seemed like a brand new train, but Luke gave it more than just one look. 

The engine itself was fairly solid, with only a telltale line here and there, a subtle change almost more felt than seen, to give away what had happened to the train. But the passenger cars were another story. The metal had been creased in places, sealed back together, welded, damaged beyond even magic's ability to completely erase. Luke found himself imagining the titanic forces involved in a train wreck, and he shuddered a bit. 

As the League of Interhouse Friendship piled out of the carriage, Luke stared at the train in front of them, barely noticing the icy winter air on his skin. All the worst damage was hidden from him on the other side of the train. It was facing off to the left as he approached the platform, ready for its southward journey, and it had been hit from the left, the right side of the train hitting the ground, sliding along the ground. Luke could almost hear the crash again, almost feel the abrupt lunge to the right as the wall across from him made a sudden approach.

Mark squeezed his hand.

"Luke, are you all right?"

Luke swallowed a lump in his throat. He laughed halfheartedly. "I wonder how many other people are worried about this train going off the rails."

Mark frowned. "Luke, if you're scared of it--"

"I'm not scared," Luke said. "I'm just... You know, I'm a little nervous." He looked at the train again. It seemed a lot smaller than he remembered it being. That's the sort of thing that will happen to your perceptions of a thing when you've seen it tossed aside like an empty banana peel.

Luke shook his head and followed Mark into the train. The interior was altered, reupholstered, practically rebuilt from the floor up. Luke stared around and breathed a sigh of relief. Even the compartments were changed, larger, with larger tables in them.

Teddy took a compartment and the others followed him in, taking their seats. He pulled a game board from his pocket. Scrabble. 

They sat around and played, and slowly, Luke got used to being on the train. It helped to have Mark next to him, perfectly calm and enjoying the game despite how badly he was losing. 

By the time they got to King's Cross, the early night outside was full of stars and Marissa had fallen asleep. Violet and Teddy were curled up, and Violet was nearly asleep herself. Fortinbras was stretched out on Mark's lap, and Luke was a bit disappointed when the train pulled into the station. They all got out, and there was Andromeda tonks, waiting for them. She held her hand out to Luke, and he smiled and took it. "Are you ready to go?" she said.

He nodded. "Yeah. We've had a heck of a term."

She favored him with a little grin, and before he knew it, he was home, putting his things away (although not too away, since he would be heading back to Hogwarts before too terribly long). Fortinbras was curled up on his bed, and everything was ready for a long, quiet sleep. Without a drink.

\-------------------

The fool had rejected him.

That, alone, was reason to kill him, but the insult he had given, in addition to the rejection, called for a more elaborate vengeance. And the man was such a fan of muggles, there was really only one proper justice to be dispensed. The fool would watch his precious muggles burn.

It hadn't taken long to find the dragon, a Romanian Longhorn, and subduing the beast had been a simple task for a master of the Imperius curse. Now, it stood at his side, unwilled, a tool, not even a pet.

He pointed towards the village that the fool had yelled him out of.

The dragon spread its wings and launched itself into the air. It was a mere tool, but a strong tool. Very few dragons had the raw physical power to launch themselves straight up into flight like that, but this one did, and he envied that effortless power. One day, he would take it for himself, but that day had not yet come. 

He watched as the beast approached the village, and took time to savor the anticipation. Before long, the muggles would burn, would run in terror from a creature they were sure was only a myth.

He pictured their fear, wanting to taste it and regretting only that he could not be there to see it in person. He was nearly ready to turn away and let the destruction begin when he stopped feeling his control of the dragon. He blinked, and a few moments later, a loud crack sounded across the rough terrain. The dragon was falling, off in the distance. 

Whatever had just happened, the dragon was dead.

He was powerful, but he was not incautious. Whatever had killed the dragon was something he could not identify. He would wait, and he would try again later, when he knew more. But still, he had been thwarted. A terrible rage was building in him, and he wanted nothing more than to rush in himself, to destroy, to lay waste...

But he was too wise for that.

He turned away and vowed to remember this place. He would destroy it once he knew the proper way. For now, he would wait.

\--------------------

Luke woke up in a cold sweat. He looked across the room at his alarm clock. The glowing numerals told him it was twelve past four in the morning, and the way his heart was racing told him he wasn't going to be going back to sleep tonight. He waited for a moment to see if he would calm down, but, predictably, he didn't, so he got out of bed and padded across the room. Fortinbras darted by under his feet, and Luke opened the door. The cat rushed out ahead of him. Luke made his quiet way down to the kitchen, and, almost without thinking about what he was doing, he started searching for the liquor. Andromeda wasn't much of a drinker, but she did drink from time to time, and he found two bottle of rum and a bottle of firewhiskey. Only one of the bottles of rum was open, drained to about the halfway point.

Luke pulled the half-full bottle out of the cabinet it was sitting in, and he stared at it for a moment. 

Somewhere in the back of his mind, a little voice was insisting that this was wrong, that he was breaking the rules, but as he unscrewed the cap, he thought to himself that he was a Slytherin. Rules were more guidelines for what might happen if you got caught. Fortinbras sat down at Luke's feet.

"You're hungry, aren't you?" Luke said, just barely above a whisper. He raised the bottle to his lips and took a swig. It burned a bit on the way down, but it was good. He went off to find Fort's dish, and sure enough, it was empty, so he got a little bit of cat food out from under the cabinet and gave Fortinbras some food. He sat at the table and watched the cat eat, counting shot-sized swallows as he drank. 

One. Fortinbras was attacking the food with enthusiastic vigor. As the rum flowed down Luke's throat, he smiled. The cat was a real sweetheart, really, and Luke was glad to have him.

Two. Fortinbras was about a quarter done with his food, and the rum's flavor was spread thoroughly enough in Luke's mouth that the shots he took weren't a shock anymore.

Three. Fortinbras's food was down to two thirds.

Four. Fortinbras started in on the second half of the bowl, and, seeming satisfied, he turned and padded up to Luke. Luke took a fifth shot and capped up the rum. It was a fairly large bottle, and he doubted what he'd taken would be missed too much, if at all. Really, the drop was barely noticeable. He returned it, a bit unsteadily and a little hesitantly, to the cabinet, then he turned and headed back toward his room. His head felt pleasantly stuffed with cottonballs, and he went up the stairs, with Fortinbras darting ahead of him. The cat scratched at the door, and Luke nudged him with his foot to make him stop. He opened the door, went into his room, and curled up on the bed. It took him a long time to get to sleep, and then it seemed like he only slept for a few moments before Teddy was shaking him awake.

"Come on, Luke! It's time to decorate the tree!"

Luke grunted and sat up. Teddy was already on his way out. Luke's head was pounding, and he felt terrible, but at least he'd managed a dreamless sleep this time.

He headed for the bathroom and brushed his teeth, twice, then hopped in the shower and got himself cleaned up. By the time he got downstairs, all the decorations were out, and it was up to him and Teddy to get them put up. The tree had already been there when they arrived, huge and almost ostentatious in its lushness, and while Andromeda got fairies onto the tree (they were real, actual, live fairies, and he had no idea how that worked, as they should have been wandering around everywhere and getting hungry and all sorts of other problematic things), Luke and Teddy put up the tinsel and the more non-living ornaments, and then they moved on to hanging garland around the room, and they bundled up and went outside to hang it up over the windows and put a wreath on the door, and then it was back inside again. 

Teddy got out the tablecloth that had little pictures of snow on it, and he and Luke spread it over the dining room table, and as soon as it was spread, they started playing with it, having a little snowball fight with the pictures of the snow on it, until Andromeda came in.

"All right, boys," she said, "that's enough fooling around. Luke, could you get out the Christmas centerpiece? It's in the cabinet over there. You'll know it when you see it." She smiled at Teddy. "Teddy, could you come with me? I need your help with the presents for our guests."

Teddy gave her a puzzled look, but he shrugged and headed out after her, and Luke went to the cabinet Andromeda had pointed out and opened it up.

There were three centerpieces inside. One, a bright, cheery one with a little ceramic pumpkin, was covered in a thin layer of dust. Another one of the centerpieces was a colorful one that had come out a couple of times over the summer, but the one Luke needed was the largest one, a holly-and-pine-covered candle holder. He pulled it out and took it, very carefully, to the table. He put it down, got it centered, and then went back to the cabinet and got out the candles for it. He got them in place, adjusted the centerpiece for a few moments, and stepped back.

The table looked good, like it was ready for the holiday. Fortinbras wandered in and jumped up onto it, batting at the snowflakes that skipped their way around the tablecloth. Luke picked him up and wandered through the house a bit, petting his cat while he looked around. It was really set for Christmas now, after only a couple hours of work. He stopped to look at the pictures on the mantel, and smiled. The picture of Mister Tonks, the man Teddy was named for, was waving at him. Luke waved back. 

"I wonder what you were like," he said. "If you were anything like your grandson, I suppose I would have liked you."

The picture, of course, made no reply, and Luke turned away, setting Fortinbras on the floor. Fortinbras wandered off, likely to go and play with the tablecloth again. 

Luke was just about to sit down and wait to be asked to do something else when Teddy's voice came from the other end of the house. "No way! Really?"

Luke blinked a couple of times and went to go investigate. He knocked on the door of the room they were in, and Andromeda opened it up. "Is everything all right in here?" Luke asked. "I heard Teddy shout. I mean, he sounded sort of happy, but..." He trailed off.

Andromeda smiled warmly. "Everything is perfectly fine, Luke. We were just discussing one of your gifts. We can't discuss it with you, obviously. You'll simply have to wait and be surprised with everyone else."

"Oh," Luke said. "All right then."

\----------------------

Luke slept well on the night of Christmas Eve, partially because he and Teddy had gone out to have a snowball fight, and when they came back in, there had been eggnog, and Andromeda was a firm believer in spiked eggnog, so Luke had simply made sure he got enough to sleep dreamlessly. 

By the time Luke and Teddy were both showered and ready for the day on Christmas, Marissa and her mother had arrived. Gwendolyn Jones was carrying a small bounty of wrapped presents, and from the size and shape of the packages, most of them were probably books, which made Luke perfectly happy. No sooner had Marissa and her mother gotten settled in than Professor Leiman arrived with Minerva McGonagall, Violet, Professor Shelly, and, to Luke's surprise, Violet's father. He stepped up to Luke. 

"Mister Restimen," he said, extending his hand. 

Andrew Leiman was a big man, with a charming, rakish face and bright blue eyes, handsome and muscled, and obviously in great shape. Luke shook his hand. "Hello," he said.  
Andrew grinned. "I don't think I ever got to thank you for helping Violet out last year. If you hadn't spotted that she needed to be lifted off the floor, god only knows what would have happened to her."

"Nothing good," Professor Leiman said. "How are you, Andromeda?"

"Quite well, thank you," Andromeda said. She cast a glance in the general direction of Teddy and Violet. "Oh, for crying out loud, Theodore Remus Lupin, show some decorum!"  
Teddy loosened his grip on Violet and blushed a bit. "Sorry," he said. Violet whispered something in his ear, and Teddy started laughing.

Andrew rolled his eyes. "I hope she's not as much of a terror as I was at her age. She doesn't go around chasing all the boys, does she, Shelly?"

"Of course not," Professor Shelly said icily. "You see, our daughter takes after me, not you."

Andrew winced. Luke would have put money down on Andrew sitting as far from Professor Shelly as possible.

The extended Leiman family (plus special guest, Minerva McGonagall) got settled in, and Professor Leiman was just starting in on his theories about what made Christmas such a special holiday when there was a pair of loud pops from the front room, and Luke hurried in to find Mark. He greeted him with a big kiss (although he was slightly more dignified about it that Teddy and Violet had been) and helped Mark's parents, Rutherford and Linda, get the presents they had brought into the family room.

The space under the tree was almost completely full. Luke had never seen a Christmas tree quite that full of promise, and he gave Mark a conspiratorial look. This was almost certain to be a good Christmas, with a very good haul.

They all talked in the family room for a while, and then Andromeda declared, cheerfully, that it was time to eat. The tablecloth had had a chance to build up some fairly large snowdrifts overnight, and it looked a bit like they were going to be eating Christmas dinner on top of a winter sky, with their legs tucked comfortably beneath a blanket of snow. The overall effect was actually very pretty. Teddy and Violet sat down across from Luke and Mark, and Marissa sat next to Luke on the other side. Andromeda brought out the food, piloting it to the table with deft movements of her wand, and then she brought out a few bottles and started asking everyone if they wanted white wine, red wine, or sparkling cider.

Luke took a glass of red wine, and after a glance at his parents for approval, Mark got a glass of the same. 

"You know," Minerva said after a few minutes, "James has told me quite a bit about our little group of Hogwarts students here. The way I hear it, you five are almost a repeat of Teddy's father and his friends. A bit more apt to follow the rules, perhaps, but that sort of friends."

"Oh, I don't know how apt they are to follow the rules," Professor Leiman said. "You might have heard about the howler pranks we've had?"

"Granddad, you can't really think that was us," Violet said.

"Oh, no," he said. "I know it was. Of course, I imagine your supply has run out, so there's no evidence to catch you with."

"And how long have you known it was them?" Professor Shelly asked.

"Oh, it's been a while," Professor Leiman replied. "I figured it out after the second one, but it was just harmless fun, and they were exercising skills they might need later in life."

"Skills they might need if they go into your line of work," Minerva said, sipping her wine. Luke looked at his glass. He was down to about half. "Honestly, though, James, I doubt anyone will ever really need to be able to make a howler sound different and deliver a ridiculous message." She sighed. "But, the damage is done, and I suppose there's nothing to be done about it. I have always been curious how howlers work."

"Well," Luke said, "Of course, we didn't do it, but I would imagine that it involves runes. They're one of the best ways to put a spell on an object permanently, you know, and then you only need to actually cast one spell."

"Quite clever," Minerva said. "I'll have to investigate that for myself. Perhaps I'll send some singing letters of my own."

"It might be a better idea to wait for the children to tell Avery Products how they did it and see if they can make money off of the idea. Help them out, you know." Professor Leiman winked at Luke. "Honestly, Luke, it was brilliant work, and I applaud it. If you'd been anything but harmless about it, I would be angry, but you weren't. You just had fun with it. And that song you finished off with was excellent. It captured the spirit of Hogwarts very nicely, I think."

Luke drained his glass and smiled. "If I ever meet the person who did it, I'll tell them you think so."

Andromeda picked up the bottle of red. "More, Luke?"

Luke nodded, and she took his glass and poured him another glass. He had a feeling no more would be forthcoming, but he could always hope. It was actually very good wine, with a pleasant taste and good aroma.

"Of course," Minerva said, "nothing you could do would compare to the absolute chaos that was... oh, was it ninety-six? Yes, I think it was ninety-six. The whole school was rebelling against Dolores Umbridge, and it was quite obvious she wasn't going to be there much longer. I'd have feared for her life, but frankly, she was... well..."

"A grade-A bitch who deserved to have her own intestines force-fed to her," Professor Leiman filled in.

Everyone turned to stare at him. "James!" Minerva exclaimed.

Linda Jonson dropped her fork. 

"Well, it's true," Professor Leiman said. "Honestly, I'm glad she's in Azkaban. A woman like that doesn't deserve to be free. In fact, she deserves the dementors."

"Thanks, James," Professor Shelly said, "but you're going to bat for me a little hard, don't you think? It's been more than a decade."

"It's not just you," Professor Leiman said. "She sent more than a hundred innocent people into that very same prison. No innocent person should have to experience Azkaban. Inflicting that hell on someone who hasn't earned it should earn it ten times over."

"It's full of dementors, right?" Luke said. 

"More than a thousand of them," Professor Leiman said quietly, "and all in the same building. I've been in there a couple of times. There isn't enough wealth in the world to pay me to go back again. Just a few dementors, and you remember the worst moment of your life. That many, all around you, and you remember all the worst things you've ever experienced." He speared a bit of ham, laid it across a bit of bread, and added, "This is really excellent ham, Andromeda."

There was a bit of nervous laughter around the table. "Thank you," Andromeda said. "I'm glad you enjoy it. The glaze is an old family recipe, and I've always been very proud of it. It's one of the few things I make better than my mother did."

"Well, it's quite well done," Professor Shelly added.

"I love the bread, as well," Gwendolyn Jones said.

Luke decided that the conversation had taken a decidedly dull turn, and he started rolling a snowball on the tablecloth. He flicked it at Marissa. 

It took her a while to notice the pictographic assault, and then a while longer to figure out how to return it, but before long, there was a healthy snowball fight going on along with the conversation. Luke was a bit surprised when regular volleys started coming from the direction of Professor Leiman, but he returned fire with great enthusiasm. Before long, Lieman was even blocking Luke's snowballs with snowballs of his own. He subtly rearranged his dishes so that they provided excellent cover while giving him good firing windows, and by the time the dessert was brought out, Professor Leiman was basically unassailable.

"So do you have any more pranks planned for after the break?" Rutherford Jonson asked.

"If we did," Luke said, "we could hardly tell you in front of two of our teachers." He drained his third glass of wine--Andromeda had been in a giving mood--and winked at Mark's father. "If there are any more pranks, though, I'm sure they'll be spectacular, whoever pulls them. Because, of course, we had nothing to do with the howlers." He rolled up a snowball and looked across the table at Teddy. Teddy was clearly in the process of rolling a snowball as well. Luke elbowed Mark, and then Marissa, and they both started in on snowballs, and then Teddy elbowed Violet, and she looked over at him, peered at something on the side of his head, and very obviously started rolling a snowball.

Minerva was going on about some stunt Professor Flitwick had pulled in his days at the school when Teddy's hand darted out and pulled the gravy boat away from Professor Leiman. "Now!" he shouted, and all five of the kids flicked their snowballs at the gap.

Professor Leiman took two of them out with counter-snowballs, but the other three all smacked into his area of the table. The tablecloth twitched a bit and he laughed and threw his hands up. "You got me! I surrender!"

Minerva stared at him for a moment. She cleared her throat. "As I was saying, once he had the goats, all he really had to do was convince Peeves that it would be funny to scare the poor things, and of course, Peeves being Peeves, that didn't take much effort. It was really more of a... a would-you-mind-doing-me-a-favor sort of a thing. Well, Peeves set the whole thing off, and the next thing you know, there's a herd of goats going completely mad in the corridors, dragging tin cans behind them, and they've all been given a potion to make them more resistant to stunning spells. Classes were cancelled for three days, it was just impossible to get anything done."

Luke laughed. That did sound like the sort of thing a young Filius Flitwick would be both clever and irreverant enough to do.

Mark drained his second glass of wine. "He might as well have unleashed a dragon. Was anyone hurt?"

"Oh, no one was hurt too badly," Minerva said. "A few bruises here and there, but nothing terrible."

There were a few more stories swapped, and the pies were eaten, and everyone was quit content by the time Andromeda announced that it was about time to go and open presents.

The whole group meandered lazily into the family room, and as they entered, Teddy's hair went red and green, with little white streaks, and he started immediately towards the tree.

"I'll pass out the presents," he said, grabbing one and taking it to Professor Leiman, and the distribution of the gifts began.

It took a very long time, just because of the sheer quantity of gifts being passed out. Eventually, Luke started helping, and then it went much faster.

When Luke started helping, Andromeda waved her wand at him and a Santa hat appeared on top of his head. He kept having to brush the little puffball away from his face. 

Apparently, that amused Mark, although he was in the middle of his third glass of wine and therefore somewhat punchy. Any time Luke delivered a gift to him, he took the time to steal a quick kiss, something that Teddy and Violet took to doing as well.

About the time Luke and Teddy started in on their own gifts, Andromeda went and got out the eggnog, which meant a little more alcohol.

Luke was just starting in on his eggnog when Andromeda stood up from her chair and said, "Luke. Could I talk to you for a moment?"

"Of course," Luke said. "What do you need?"

She eased herself down onto the floor across from him, and she was smiling very broadly. "Luke, I'd like to let you know that I've truly loved having you around here. You're a true friend to Theodore, and we've been blessed to have you with us. I've given this a lot of thought, and I've spoken to Teddy about it, and he agrees that it's a wonderful notion.  
Luke, I'd like to offer to adopt you, formally, so that you would be a real part of this family." 

Luke felt as though his eyes had just made their best effort to escape from his face, they had gone so wide. Andromeda was smiling and waiting until he made some response, but Luke felt frozen in place. His tongue seemed almost glued to the roof of his mouth. The best he could do was to croak out a nonsense syllable, and Andromeda smiled a little more broadly. 

"Now, you don't have to decide now, and I'll understand perfectly if you don't want to, after all, you're the last Restimen there is, and that's nothing to take lightly. If it's too soon, you can just go right ahead and tell me, and I won't mind at all, and if you don't think you'll ever be ready for it, that's all right." 

Luke stared at her for a moment or two longer, and then he leaned forwards and pulled her into a tight embrace. There were tears streaming down his eyes, and he really had no idea whatsoever when that had begun, but everyone around him looked very happy, and he thought that this might be the happiest he had been since his mother died. He had no idea whether or not he would take the offer--after all, it wasn't the sort of thing that should be done lightly--but just to receive it was incredible. Andromeda either understood perfectly or was very understanding despite not quite getting it. She hugged him and waited until he pushed back away from her, which took a few minutes. "I don't know what to say," Luke said. "I'll have to think about it. I mean, it's not a little decision, but either way I'm incredibly honored that you would make the offer. Thank you, Andromeda, thank you so much."

Her smile softened a little bit and she squeezed his shoulder. "Take all the time you need, Luke. You don't want to rush this decision. But the offer had to be made. You're so important to us, and I really hope you know that."

"If I didn't before," Luke said, "I certainly do now." He picked up his eggnog and went to climb up onto the couch beside Mark.

Mark squeezed Luke's hand and kissed him, but he didn't say a word. Teddy went over to the radio and turned it on, and Christmas music flooded the room. Luke lost himself in the comforting familiarity of Bing Crosby's White Christmas and drank eggnog while conversation went on around him. He didn't really pay too much attention, because he was thinking about the implications of Andromeda's offer. Once, he chuckled softly, and Mark nudged him and raised an eyebrow.

Luke grinned. "If she adopts me, I think that would make me Teddy's uncle."

Mark laughed. "It would, wouldn't it."

"I'll be expecting piggyback rides and trips to the coast once in a while," Teddy said from across the room. He was curled up with Violet in a nice spot next to one of the couches, a couple of thick cushions underneath them both.

"You never know," Andromeda said, "He might turn out to be your mean uncle. Never gives you anything except at Christmas, and then it's always socks."

"You wouldn't," Teddy exclaimed, doing a fairly passable job of sounding scandalized. 

"He would," Violet replied. "He'll even make sure they've got ugly, embarrassing patterns on them."

"Unicorns playing with puffskeins," Luke suggested.

"Little pink fairies, The Glisseo Girls," Mark added.

"Kittens," Marissa said.

"No!" Teddy shouted with halfhearted agony. "Not kittens! Anything but kittens!"

"It's too late," Luke said. "I'm going to inflict kittens on you. Thanks to me, you'll always be known as fuzzyfoot!"

"The worst moniker I could ever receive!" Teddy pressed his hand against his forehead and swooned dramatically. "It will be the death of me!" He flopped back a bit, and wound up with his head in Violet's lap. "Violet, revive me with your love!"

She rolled her eyes and tweaked his nose, but she also leaned down and kissed him. Teddy let out a little whoop and sat up bolt upright. "All right!" He jumped up. "Come on, Luke, Mark, Marissa," he bent down and grabbed Violet's hand, and he dragged her along behind him. 

Luke shrugged and followed as Teddy made his way up the stairs to his bedroom. 

"Don't have too much fun up there!" Andromeda called after them. The theory, at least, seemed to be that all five of them together wouldn't cause too much trouble, or possibly that if they did, Andrew Leiman would immolate them. Teddy's hair went through another color change as he led them into his room, going from red and green to to a sort of bubblegum pink color. He closed the door once everyone was in, and hurried over to his dresser. He pulled open a drawer, reached in, and almost reverantly, he pulled out a bottle, cradling it in his hands and holding it up to the light. Luke grinned. The bottle was obviously full of rum, and good rum at that. The dark reddish tint of the stuff was appealing, and although there wasn't too terribly much of it, it was still a full bottle. 

"I've been saving this," Teddy said. "I was hoping for a special ocassion, and I think Luke being invited to join the family qualifies. Let's all drink to it."

"Teddy," Marissa said hesitantly.

"Oh, come on, Marissa," Teddy said, and that was all he really had to say. With as much as she'd already had, she was easily persuaded. She shrugged, and then it was down to Mark.

"I don't know," he said. "I mean, there's a lot of difference between a bit of wine and eggnog and... and that. That's... I mean, there's a reason they call that hard liquor."

Luke shook his head. "Mark, you sound like an after-school special. For once, would you please just drink with me? It's not going to turn into some sort of a huge disaster if you get a little silly on rum."

Mark hesitated. "You won't let me do anything I'll regret?"

"I promise," Luke said.

Mark frowned, and then he extended his hand and Teddy handed him the bottle. Mark looked at the label. Griselda Gripling's Grand Olde Rum, the label said, in letters big enough that Luke could read them at a good distance. Phineas had mentioned the brand as something he'd like to get a bottle of sometime. Luke didn't even want to think about how Teddy must have gone about getting his hands on the rum, but he didn't have much time for his thoughts to wander in that direction anyway, because Mark uncapped the bottle and raised it to his lips. He took a swig and made a face, then took another swig and handed it to Luke. 

Luke held out his hand, and Mark pressed the bottle into it, then presented him with the cap. Luke took the cap, and raised the bottle to his lips. There was a reason he preferred rum over most other liquors, and Griselda Gripling, whoever she was, was a master of bringing out that reason. It was sweet, with a hinting of other flavors, savory over sour over touches of almost-bitter, complex and delightful. it was obviously an expensive bottle, and Luke made sure to savor it. He took another swig, and passed it off to Marissa, enjoying the way the flavor lingered in his mouth. Marissa took a swig of her own, and then a second one, and passed it on to Violet. Violet seemed to be in a playful mood, because when she had taken her two sips, she passed the bottle off to Teddy and immediately held up her hands and a fireball puffed into being. She played with it, spinning it around as the rum passed around the circle again.

For a while, they drank almost somberly, but before long, the rum started working on them. First Violet leaned against Teddy and put her feet up on Marissa's lap, and then Luke laid out so his head was in Mark's lap, at least when he didn't have the rum. Marissa leaned back against Teddy's bed, and finally, Mark said, "You know, this is fun. I ought to do this sort of thing more often."

"Well of course," Luke said. "There's a reason I enjoy it, you know."

Mark rolled his eyes and leaned down to kiss Luke, not a little kiss, but a real toe-curler. He only stopped because Teddy handed him the bottle. Mark took a couple more swigs and passed it on to Luke. 

Luke took the bottle and drank a couple of swallows, then took one more swig for good measure and passed it on to Marissa. Mark resumed snogging him.

Eventually, Mark seemed to decide that he was done snogging for the moment, and he let up and the bottle went around a couple more times. By the time it was down to half, everyone was very obviously drunk. Marissa fell asleep, and Luke grinned at her.

The bottle kept going around, but a little more slowly now. At about the three-quarter point, Mark stirred, and pulled Luke after him to the door.

"Mark," Luke said, a little giggle catching in his throat. Mark eased the door open and peeked outside of it. He pulled Luke along after him, and Luke closed the door after him, very quietly. He heard Teddy saying something that sounded a bit like an encouragement, but Teddy was slurring his words, so Luke couldn't tell what he was saying. It didn't really matter much.

Mark pulled Luke to his own bedroom, and they eased their way inside, closing the door quietly behind them.

Mark turned and gave Luke a drunken smile.

\-----------------------

It was very obvious, by the time midnight rolled around and Luke and Mark were back in Teddy's room, that no one would be going home for quite a while. Luke, Teddy, and Mark polished off the bottle of rum and, in between knowing looks at Luke, Teddy expounded on the recent exploits of his favorite quidditch team. Luke listened, although without much interest, and leaned on Mark. Mark fell asleep before too long, and Luke slowly drifted off as well.

When Luke woke up, Mark was gone, and he was in his bed.

His head felt like there was a tiny man with a tiny sledgehammer inside of it, swinging away at the inside of his skull, probably cackling. He had a feeling he was in trouble. He swung his legs out of the bed and glanced at the clock. It was almost noon. Luke made his way downstairs and found Andromeda in the family room. It was still full of the debris from the party, and yet she sat calmly, almost as though she was waiting for him.

She sipped a cup of tea, and, clearly making no effort to be any kind of quiet, she said, "Hello, Luke! How are you feeling today?"

Luke winced. "I'm all right," he lied.

Andromeda smiled. "Excellent. If you think you might need to throw up, you know where the bathroom is."

He nodded. So far, that hadn't happened, but you never really knew.

"There's no breakfast made up," Andromeda said. "But you ought to be able to manage for yourself."

"All right," Luke said. "I guess everyone went home?"

"At about two," Andromeda agreed. "Violet was awake by then, and Marissa managed all right, but they had to carry poor Mark out. I got Andrew to bring you to your room."

"Is Teddy up yet?" Luke wanted to know.

Andromeda shook her head. "I thought I would let you two sleep it off. I imagine the rest of the day will be unpleasant enough without you having to wake up before you feel like it."

Luke nodded, and something in his stomach went "urp", and he hurried off to the bathroom.

When he came back out, Teddy was up. He looked at least as bad as Luke felt, and he groaned as Luke came into the kitchen. "Was she icy to you, too, then?"

"Arctic," Luke said. "Did she scream at you when she found out?"

"No," Teddy grimaced. "I really don't want to be here when she decides she wants to start."

"Oh, good, you're both up now," Andromeda said cheerily from the door into the kitchen. "Luke, sit down. Teddy, stay."

Luke took his seat next to Teddy.

Andromeda walked up to the other end of the table. "I suppose you had fun last night? Well, now you get to clean up after your mess. You will both write letters to everyone at the party, including your friends, apologizing for your conduct last night. You will be doing all of the cooking, and all of the cleaning in this house for the next week, you will not be attending any New Year parties, you will not be playing with any of your video games, you will not watch any of your television, you will do whatever I tell you to, and if I ever catch either of you sneaking rum, or whiskey, or even so much as a butterbeer into this house again, I will hang you from the front door by your ears and you will know what it means to really regret your actions!" Her voice rose up to downright shrill levels as she spoke, until she was shouting and both boys were squeezing their eyes shut. "I don't know which one of you brought that bottle, and I don't much care! You're both far too smart to go around doing bloody stupid things like drinking that much at your age, and I'll beat you both bloody if you insist on behaving as though you've been the victims of a brain-mashing jinx! This sort of behavior is not fitting for young men your age, or for anyone as bright as you are!

"I love you both, but if you ever do anything that outrageously stupid again, I will not hesitate to punish you as mercilessly as possible! Now, cook yourselves breakfast and clean the kitchen!"

Teddy jumped up right away, and Luke wasn't far behind him. The breakfast they cooked was, of course, a complete disaster, but it was better than the nothing they would have had if they didn't try. Luke ate a completely ruined pancake with all the vigor he would normally have applied to half a piece of burnt toast (there had been burnt toast earlier. Luke had applied all the vigor he would normally have applied to slugs), and Teddy glared sullenly at his plate.

"She didn't have to make us do everything," he said darkly. "She'll run us ragged, doing it all. And without magic. It's going to be horrible, Luke."

"We did sort of foul it up a bit, though, didn't we?" Luke said. "I mean, all right, so we were just having a bit of fun, but we went overboard, and now we've got to pay for that. I know it seems a bit much, but... well, we embarrassed her at her own Christmas party. I'd be angry, too."

"I suppose so," Teddy said. "But I'm not happy about it, anyways."

"You're not supposed to be." Luke finished off his pancake. "You're being punished. It would be a little worrying if you were happy about it." He took a deep breath. "I just wish we hadn't got caught. I need drink at night, or else I get nightmares. And not just your average, run-of-the-mill nightmares, but things Voldemort remembers."

"I'd help you," Teddy said, "But I think she might mean it about the ears."

Luke sighed. "I can't ask you to help me. I'll just have to manage. It's only a week."

Teddy nodded, and Luke went back to his food.

After breakfast, they cleaned the kitchen. About halfway through, the activity caught up with Teddy, and most of his breakfast ended up in the sink. Luke had to clean it up while Teddy recovered, and between how miserable they were and how much there was to clean, it was dinnertime before they were finished. 

They were at least recovered enough to not make a complete mess of things when they cooked, and Andromeda gave them their assignment for the next day as they ate.  
Luke was exhausted by bedtime, and he went up to his room and collapsed into the bed. Fortinbras meowed at him, and he huffed out a sigh and went to go feed the cat, then he went back upstairs and went to bed again. He couldn't get to sleep until nearly three in the morning. He was too afraid of what he would dream.

\-----------------------

"Look at the ickle, widdle-bitty mudblood!"

"Oh, shut up, Alvin!" 

Alvin Broodmoore glared across the Slytherin common room at James Bernbaum. "What, you're defending the little git, now? I suppose you like to go for the little bitty ones now, then? Gonna ask the little baby boy for a date?"

Bernbaum rolled his eyes and looked over at the object of their conversation. "Not bloody likely, Broodmoore. I'm trying to write that stupid essay for Slughorn, though, so I'd really appreciate if you'd shut your ugly git mouth."

He looked away from Broodmoore, and turned towards Bernbaum. That wasn't worthy of thanks, but Broodmoore was obnoxious and loud, and some sort of reward was in order. He peered over Bernbaum's shoulder at the essay. "Asphodel," he said. "With a bit of spearmint, and cannabis for potency. No more than a half an ounce of any of it, except the asphodel. If you add too much spearmint, it congeals, if you add too much cannabis, it causes hallucinations. Too much asphodel, and it will kill you."

Bernbaum stared at him and then he opened up his potions textbook and leafed through it. He glared. "All right, Riddle, what makes you think you're allowed to give me advice?"

"What makes you think you're allowed to call me a mudblood. I'm a halfblood. My father was a wizard!" He gave Bernbaum an angry look. "You don't call me a mudblood, because I'm not!"

"Shut up, Riddle!" Bernbaum snapped. He drew his wand and pointed it, and there was a sharp pain, radiating away from where the wand was pointed.

He retreated away from the bullying boy and glared at him across the room. It took a little bit of concentration, but he managed to make Bernbaum's pet rat jump out of the other boy's bag and run across the floor to him. 

The rat stared up at him, and then turned and fled. Soon enough, there was a loud hiss, and Bernbaum looked up just in time to see Alicia Parkinson's cat dropping the rat at his feet.

...

The fool was actually trying to resist him. He could say this for James Potter, he had the fortitude to have been a true wizard, if only the man wasn't so complete an idiot.

"Make James' death painful," Severus had said. That was as quickly done as said. He raised up his wand and Potter crumpled to the floor. 

"No... not my family... don't kill my family..." 

The halfwit was actually trying to plead with him.

He thrust his wand at him. Potter screamed and tears streamed down his face.

"You have shown courage. Perhaps you will feel some pride at knowing that you have a virtue. It may provide some comfort before you die. Of course, I have been asked by a follower of mine not to allow you comfort. Mordrenaska."

Fear contorted the wizard's face, and then the killing curse leapt from his wand and killed Potter.

He turned and made his way up the stairs. The idiot woman would be trying just as hard to defend her son.

Severus wanted her alive, but Snape could get his toys elsewhere.

He stalked into the infant boy's room, his wand held out in front of him, and the woman was standing there, waiting...

...

Hepzibah Smith.

Such a vapid old woman.

She was harmless herself, but the things she had were things to be coveted, and he did not allow coveting when he could take.

Hepzibah sipped her tea, and then she frowned.

"Oh, but Tom, this is... oh, you nasty little boy!" He had not been subtle. Why would he be.

"Imperius," he muttered, and her eyes glazed, just a bit. She raised the teacup to her lips and drank death. The poison coursed through her veins, and he smiled as her house-elf walked into the room.

"Hokey. How could you?" He smiled and raised his wand at the elf.

...

This was power.

This was true, uninhibited power.

They flowed out of the house of Trudy Nopper, his faithful followers.

Malfoy, the wealth.

Nott, the muscle.

Avery, the political power.

Goyle and Crabbe, the true-believers.

With these five men, he would build an empire that would outlast the glory of Rome, outclass the power of Atlantis, and overwhelm the world. 

First, England would be his, and then the world. From there... from there he would find new things to take. None would dare to stand against him, would think to oppose his power.

And it all began with the death of this woman, this useless bitch.

It began, but it would not end.

...

An old man in his dotage! That was all Albus Dumbledore was, all that he could ever be!

The bleeding heart of a halfwit that had told him about magic had served his first and last true purpose the day he explained to a young boy in a muggle orphanage that he was special.

And now, that same pointless man had dared to tell him no.

With him as their teacher, no child would have learned anything but the barest truth about the Dark Arts.

And what a truth it was. The Dark Arts were true power.

They were immortality.

They were confidence.

Every fool child that did not seek to follow him after learning what they truly faced if they did not would die, but now so, so many more would perish.

He stepped up to the entrance of the Room of Hidden Things and he reached into his pocket. 

The man inside was pulled out with a sort of dull popping noise. He was stupid and bruised and bloodied, and he had tried to stop the man who was destined to rule the world.  
He held the idiot up in front of his eyes.

"Do you see where we are?"

The idiot babbled out a few nonsense syllables.

"We are in Hogwarts, Bernbaum. You died here, decades ago, but now you have made the final mistake. You sought to stop me." He threw Bernbaum to the floor and pulled the Diadem of Ravenclaw out of his other pocket.

"Do you see this, Bernbaum? This alone would grant me immortality." He waved his wand at it, and the diadem flew away to perch itself among the stacks of hidden things.  
"I have more, just like it. And you sought to oppose me. Has your foolish love for that muggle blinded you to power as well as to how pathetic he was?" He stepped forwards. "I need your death, Bernbaum. You will help me today. Today, we curse this place that you loved so much."

He aimed his wand.

...

"Do you know who you are?"

The basilisk's question was a fascinating one. She had posed it in all seriousness, waiting politely for an answer and, presumably, watching him for some sign of a slip.

"No," he said.

"That doesss not sssurprissse me," she said. "Ssslytherin'sss family wass never known for itsss luck. But I can sssense it in you. Have you sssearched for your originsss?"

He nodded. "Of course. But my father must not have distinguished himself. He's not mentioned in the school records anywhere."

"Perhapsss it wasss your mother who had magic?"

He shook his head violently. "Impossible. She died. She wasn't murdered, she just died. No one with magic would have allowed herself--"

"Do you truly believe that?" The basilisk's sibilant voice slid over his shoulder. "Your mother musst not have had the sssame ssskillss you have, sssince I never met her." He heard the sound of the basilisk sliding around him, coiling and making her ponderous way around the hidden chamber. "You ssshould sssearch for her. You are the Heir of Ssslytherin. You musst know where you came from before you can assssume the glory that isss rightfully yoursss."

"Perhaps I will," he said. "But first, you'll have to do as I say. There are some people here that I want out of the way. All you have to do is look at them, and my problems will be solved. Let's get to work."

\-----------------------

Luke awoke on the day he returned to Hogwarts, still tired, early in the morning, wishing he dared to go downstairs for a drink. He rolled over. Fortinbras was in a tight little ball of fur, sleeping on his pillow. Luke sat up and buried his face in his hands. He wasn't getting back to sleep. He hadn't so much as tried since the first nightmare. It was hopeless, so he wasn't going to waste any more time staring at the ceiling. 

The clock read six-thirty, which wasn't bad. He went off to take a shower. He looked in the mirror. There were dark circles under his eyes, but they weren't as bad as they had been. He was, he thought, probably a few days beyond mere dark circles. He wanted to drown his sleepless nights, and he knew how to do it. He just wasn't being allowed.

Luke stripped down, wincing at the sight of the scars on his legs. Dreaming of death and misery every night gave him a shockingly low tolerance for those reminders of his father's death, since his father's death reminded him of his mother's death. He tested the water, and of course, it was the perfect temperature. It was always the perfect temperature. Luke sometimes felt like he would never get used to the wizarding world, but it was in a good way. He soaped up and tried not to think, taking a long, long shower simply because the hot water never ran out. By the time he was clean and ready, Teddy was waiting for the shower.

"How long have you been up?" Teddy asked.

"A long time," Luke said, and he hurried off to go cook up breakfast.

Andromeda came down to get some breakfast shortly before Teddy arrived, and she made them clean the dishes before they left for the Hogwarts Express. 

Luke very nearly cried with relief when he got on board the train. He had spotted Phineas a little way down the platform, and it had taken a lot of effort not to run up to the older boy and hug him out of sheer, exuberant desire for alcohol.

He had more dignity than that.

Instead, Luke and Teddy sat down in an empty compartment, and Teddy fussed around with his hair color and style until Violet came in. Marissa came in after her and after a minute, Mark opened up the door and looked around for a few moments. With the redesigned compartments, there was plenty of room for him, and he took a seat next to Luke. After a minute or two, Victoire Weasley came in and took the last seat, on the other side of Mark from Luke. She made puppy dog eyes at Teddy, and Teddy ignored her and pulled out a Scrabble game. Mark decided that he wanted to play as his own side.

Mark was cagey and hard-to-reach for the whole train ride, and when they got out to get on the thestral-drawn carriages, Luke dragged Mark off to one of them, tossing a quick 

"You guys go on with Marissa" over his shoulder. 

He climbed up into the carriage and leaned forward to snap "go" at the thestrals.

The carriage started moving, and Luke sat down and stared at Mark.

"Mark, what's wrong?"

Mark took a deep breath. "Luke, are you going to drink tonight?"

"I want to sleep," Luke said, "so yes."

"Luke," Mark said, "Don't."

Luke sighed. "You didn't want to get drunk on Christmas, did you?"

"To be honest, no." Mark looked pained. "I wasn't really in control of myself, not entirely, and I did some things that... they weren't things I was really ready to do, and I can't take them back. I don't like who I am when I drink, and I don't like who you are when you drink either."

Luke blinked. "You don't--"

"I love you, but I hate what drinking does to you." Mark looked out the window. "I'm afraid for you, Luke. I'm afraid that you're not taking this seriously."

"That's ridiculous, Mark," Luke said. "Of course I'm taking it seriously."

"Are you, really, though? You get drunk and you don't care what happens, because you've got Phineas' potion to make it better. You're going to hurt yourself someday."

"I'm too smart to hurt myself," Luke said.

The carriage came to a stop, and Mark climbed out. Luke sighed. Mark would get over it eventually. He always did.

\----------------------

The first Hogsmeade weekend didn't come around for a while. When it did, Luke went out with Mark. Their date only took up a couple of hours. Mark had a potions essay he had to write, and Professor Leiman had forbidden them from working together because Mark's essays were "starting to read a lot like Luke's," which was apparently a problem. Luke went to the hog's Head, and there was Phineas, with one of the Ravenclaw seventh year girls and one of the Slytherin sixth year girls. He waved Luke over, and Luke sat down at his table.

"How are you tonight, Luke?" Phineas asked.

Luke grinned. "I'm pretty good," he said. "I'm noticing that I haven't had a lot to drink lately, though. Sort of why I'm here."

Phineas chuckled and gestured in the general direction of the barman. "The first one is on me, but after that, you're on your own."

The barman arrived, and Luke smiled at him, then looked at Phineas. "A shot of Griselda Gripling for each of us?"

Phineas raised an eyebrow. "Not cheap, but all right. Four shots of Griselda Gripling's Grand Olde."

The barman went off to get their drinks with a little grunt.

"Why did you decide you wanted that?"

Luke shrugged. "I had some Griselda over the break. Had a lot of it, actually. Teddy got a bottle. I expect I don't really want to know where he got it from."

Phineas smirked. "Your friend is really sort of Slytherin, isn't he?"

"In all the best ways. He's just more Ravenclaw, and also in all the best ways." The barman set the four shots down. Phineas' two girls each picked up their shots, and Luke and Phineas raised their glasses. Phineas winked before he tossed his back, but halfway through, he noticed that Luke was taking the time to savor it. He stopped, holding the half-shot he already had in his mouth and smiling as much as it was possible to do so with half a shot of rum in his mouth. Luke finished his shot, and Phineas followed suit, then nodded. "I'm going to have a bottle of that at all times once I've got a place of my own."

"Absolutely," Luke said.

Phineas' dates lost interest after the third round and wandered off together, leaving Luke to drink alone with him.

Luke was just fine with that, and he and Phineas got properly tanked before heading back to Hogwarts, leaning on each other and singing a nigh-incomprehensible rendition of "Rock the Boggart", which was a blatently ridiculous song at the best of times. When they came in the door, Luke half-sobered on the spot. Mark was in the entrance hall, and he looked cross in the same way that the owner of the Hog's Head looked old.

"Where are you going?" Mark said.

Luke swallowed. "Back to the Slytherin common room."

"I'll meet you there," Phineas said. He rushed off, making an exit that he probably thought was much more graceful than it actually was.

Mark stepped up to Luke.

"You have a problem."

"No, I don't."

Mark pushed him. Luke staggered backwards a couple of steps, and then tipped and fell back on his butt. "You have a problem, and I can't deal with it anymore. You tell me you're not going to go drinking, and then you go drinking. You spend more time with a bottle than you do with me! I tell you I don't want to drink, but the instant I have a glass of wine, you talk me into drinking a bottle of rum!" Mark's voice had gone raw and rough, almost more of a scream than a mere shout. His face was red, his fists balled up at his sides. "You're selfish, you won't stop and look at the things you're doing, you have all the restraint of a bull in a china shop, and you deal with all of your problems by drinking until you forget you have them!" His voice was echoing off the walls of the entrance hall, the intensity fallen away but the emotion still very clear and obvious. Luke was half-convinced a teacher was going to come and drag him away, but of course, that would be the more pleasant option, so there was no way it would happen. "You've had traumatic experiences before! You watched your father die! You had to deal with the whole school thinking you were completely evil! But some idiot showed you how to drink it all gone, and now you think you've got permission to sit around and act damaged, drink like you're an old man with nothing to keep you busy except drinking like it's a career!" Mark turned in a full circle, his arms spread wide, exasperated and almost pleading. "I can't take it anymore, Luke! You're turning into someone different from who I fell in love with, and I won't live with that! Are you going to go and drink with Phineas after I'm through with you here?"

Mark stared at Luke, and Luke swallowed. The taste of rum was still in his mouth, the foul masking the decent masking the good masking the great. He didn't respond. He couldn't.

Mark was speaking more softly now, tears in his eyes. "That's what I thought. We're done, Luke. I'm not coming back to you. You can go look for a new Hufflepuff if you really think you need one." He turned around, and Luke stared after him. Hideously angry, Mark still had the power to turn Luke's head, walking away, his steps more full of confidence than Luke had ever seen. Luke wanted him more than ever, and now... now he couldn't have him.

"Mark," he croaked, but Mark was already gone.

Luke looked around. There were a few students gathered together in the entrance hall, obviously having seen most of the spectacle. Teddy pushed through the crowd, his hair slowly fading from color to color with no apparent control on his part. He held a hand out to Luke, and Luke took it.

"Luke," Teddy said, and Luke shook his head and ran for the dungeons. "Luke!" Teddy shouted, but his voice was already growing dim and distant. Luke rounded a corner, and if Teddy called after him again, he didn't hear.

He came to the Slytherin common room and snapped "basilisk."

The hidden door flew open barely in time. Luke hadn't even been aware that he was crying until he blinked away tears before he spotted Phineas. The quidditch captain was staring at him.

"Drink," Luke said.

Phineas nodded and gestured to Luke, and Luke followed him back out to the corridors. They wound their grim, silent way to the little bar behind the painting that had to be insulted before it would open. Eloise Parker was inside, and Luke sat down next to her. Phineas pulled out a small glass and splashed in a generous helping of nettle wine, then added in a bit of blackcurrant rum and some flavored vodka. He handed it to Luke.

Luke took the drink, and he sat and waited for the drink to take him.

It took a torturously long time.

\----------------------  
Mark didn't come to breakfast the next day. After a very public breakup like that, it was unsurprising, but somewhere in the back of his mind, Luke had hoped Mark would have a change of heart, but of course, once his mind was set on something, Mark was astonishingly hard to persuade. He wouldn't be changing his mind on this.

Luke had taken a double dose of Phineas' hangover-curing potion, and he felt like he was at least going to be able to manage for the day, physically. 

Mentally, he sort of felt like he wanted to crawl into a hole and die.

Marissa had taken Luke's side, if only barely.

"I think maybe Mark was right, and you do have a bit of a problem," Marissa said. "I mean, he should never have humiliated you like that, but you have been drinking a lot lately."  
Luked glared at her across the table.

"I'm just saying," Marissa went on. "I mean, you can't blame me for thinking maybe you ought to cut back."

"How would you like to remember death and misery you're not responsible for every night of your life?" Luke poked at his plate, pushing his scrambled eggs around. He'd carved a little frowning face into them a few minutes earlier, and now he was busily destroying it. "Because if I stop drinking, that's what happens. I couldn't drink for a week after the Christmas party, and every night there was some new horror. I remembered the murders he comitted, and the people he persecuted, and the pain he caused, and even some of his old humiliations. It's a wonder I've not gone completely mental!" He slammed his fork into his plate on the last word, and the plate held, but the fork made an awful screeching noise against the ceramic and the tines bent around. He glared at the fork and tossed it onto the plate. It skidded along the plate, then skipped off of it to land on the table between him and Marissa.

"Luke, I know it's hard," she began.

"You don't know how hard," he snapped, and with that, he stood up and walked away. It was Sunday, and he didn't have any classes to go to. Without Mark present, they couldn't force the swear-chair room to appear without spilling someone else's drink, so Luke found himself without a destination. He wandered aimlessly in the corridors, and found himself on the fifth floor, leaning against a tapestry of someone stupid doing something really stupid for what Luke could only assume were monumentally stupid reasons. He stared at the wall across from him, wishing fervently he had a place to hide from the rest of the world, but of course, while there was almost certainly a place somewhere in Hogwarts that would suffice, Luke wasn't in that place. All the wall offered him was blank grey stone and a few pockmarks where some long-ago duel had scarred it.

He pointed his wand and muttered a curse, watching in a sort of non-satisfied satisfaction as his own pockmark joined the old ones. He wanted to tear the whole castle down brick by brick, he wanted to run screaming from Hogwarts, sign up for Durmstrang or Beauxbatons or Rainpath or the Salem Witche's Institute or the Academie Gloria, or one of the hundreds of other schools he could sign up for if he really needed to, and it felt like a need, right at that moment, it really felt like what he absolutely had to have if he was going to survive was food, water, air, and to get away from Hogwarts. 

There was a school in Australia nestled somewhere far below Uluru, a place where the ghosts were ghosts of aboriginal wizards who had practiced magic without wands for millennia, and had been so skilled that Australia had stood inviolate for eons before the white men came with their relentless technology. Luke could explore the warrens and niches of that school and be happily lost for days.

There was a school on a rock in the middle of one of North America's Great Lakes, a place where the deeper you went, the more likely you were to look out the window and see some giant fish the Muggles swore didn't exist. Luke could stare out of the huge windows and pretend the rest of the world was all green waters and fish the size of the Hogwarts Express.

There was a school in India, built into the treetops, so cleverly constructed and enchanted that muggles passed by beneath it nearly every day, on their way from one place to another, or hunting for game that was growing scarcer by the day. Luke could go there and revel in the oppressive heat, never having to think about anything but how he would work through it.

There was a school built into an African mountainside, so close to one of the world's last dragon preserves that the windows were reinforced against dragon flames and there were no exits to the outside. You gained access through a tunnel that went down through the mountain and branched out to all directions. Luke could watch the dragons from the safety of the school and dream about being carried off by one.

There was a school on an enchanted island in the Galapagos that had once played a game of moving-island chicken with Charles Darwin's famous expedition. After the islands became a tourist hot spot, they had sunk the school beneath the waves, and there it stayed, nestled into the valley between two towering sea mounts. Luke could walk its corridors, hoping for a wall to give out and sweep him into the sea.

There was a school deep in a cave in the Amazon, where the last remnants of Aztec civilization were preserved, a ghost, a few scattered artifacts, and an entire room lined with gold. Luke could go there, and he would be surrounded by a history he couldn't remember.

There was a painting in Hogwarts, of a drunken man mourning over the broken wands in front of him. Luke went there, instead of to any of those other places, and he sat down on one side of the shabby little bar on the other side of the painting. Luke could pick up a bottle and make the rest of Sunday go away, and that's precisely what he did.

\----------------------

Mark still didn't show up at meals, and after a while, the dimished League of Interhouse friendship came to accept that he wasn't coming back. He'd abandoned them once before, in first year, but that had been after a relatively small scuffle, something that wasn't permanent, and it had been Luke who talked him around to coming back. Mark sat with the rest of the Hufflepuffs at meals now. Luke seemed perfectly content to pretend that Mark didnt exist, and if Mark turned to look at him from time to time, Luke didn't do the same. He went through the next couple of weeks with his eyes a bit blurred. Marissa asked a couple of times if he was drunk, and although Luke didn't say he was, he also didn't say it with a lot of conviction. 

Marissa only sighed and told him to be careful.

When Luke didn't pull himself out of his depression and drunken stupor long enough to attend a meeting of the Duelling Club, even Teddy got worried. He found Luke in the swear-chair room, clutching a teacup filled with very pungent rum.

"Go away," Luke said.

Teddy sat down. "I'm not leaving. Come on, Luke. You've got friends. We've already lost Mark, we can't lose you. We're the League, Luke. We're... we're... I don't know, we're like the Order of the Phoenix. We lost one, but that doesn't mean you should let it all fall apart. We miss you."

"I eat with you three every day," Luke pointed out wryly. He took another sip of his rum.

"You eat at our table," Teddy snorted. "That's not the same as eating with us. I miss my best friend. Where's the boy that my gran offered to adopt?"

"Sitting on the floor in the entrance hall," Luke said. "His bum hurts, and he feels like crying."

Teddy stared at him for a few moments. "You need to come to the next club meeting."

"What club?"

"Duelling club!" Teddy shouted. "You've missed it tonight, Luke. You love duelling. Come with us to the next meeting. Marissa will be there. You can duel her."

"Maybe I don't want to go to Duelling Club," Luke said.

"Maybe I'll marry the Hogwarts Express," Teddy said, "but it's not bloody likely. You want to go to Duelling Club. You're happy there."

Luke shook his head. He swallowed a bit more rum. "I'm not bloody happy anywhere, Teddy, so I don't see why I should go to Duelling Club and make everyone else miserable."

"Because I'll drag you if you refuse to come," Teddy said, with the air of someone throwing down a gauntlet. 

"You and what army?"

"Me and my wand," Teddy said darkly. "I will knock you out and drag you along to Duelling club, and there is nothing you can do to stop me except to duel me, and that would rather defeat the point of refusing to go. Don't make me do it, Luke. Please don't make me do it."

Luke blinked a couple of times. Teddy was actually threatening to force him to go. Apparently, the Ravenclaw boy actually cared about this. He still had no intention of going, but he could at least humor Teddy. "I'll think about it."

"All right," Teddy said. "Well, remember that you're going to end up duelling someone either way." He reached out and took the cup from Luke's hands. Luke half expected him to dump it out on the floor, but he sipped instead, and made a face. "That's awful, Luke."

"I wasn't trying for high quality," Luke said. "I only wanted to get drunk."

Teddy's face became a little more comic. "Well, mission accomplished. I think I'm going to be stupid for the rest of the night." He shrugged and took another sip, then handed it back to Luke. Luke drank down quite a bit of it at once, then handed Teddy another teacup. Teddy filled it up, and, still drinking the first one, Luke started transfiguring the water in the second.

Within an hour, Luke and Teddy were both quite drunk, swapping ridiculous versions of old songs as though they were capable of singing in their condition, things with lyrics like "I'm proud to have both my ears again/so I can sing on key," or "I've seen bigfoot walk in the rain/I've seen chupacabra and an alien/ Went to Kansas and I saw Tupac growing grain/and I saw a unicorn that time I went to Spain" (Which actually went on for quite a while and was quite funny and oddly creative).

Finally, the painting opened up, and Violet stuck her head in. She rolled her eyes. "All right, you two. Out. It's almost curfew."

"But Violet," Luke protested, "I've seen Elvis! I've seen him time and time again!"

"I've seen parlaiment make decisions that were sane!" Teddy added in.

Luke grinned. "Oh! I've seen a politician freely take the blame!"

"What on earth are you two talking about?" Violet said.

"I've seen Stubby Boardman; we played a long chess game!" Teddy exclaimed excitedly.

"I heard a pop song without a dumb refrain!" Luke shot back.

"All right," Violet said. "Come on, you two." She grabbed Teddy, and he gave luke a disappointed look, then added in his parting shot: "And a crumple-horned snorkack one time  
on a train!"

Luke laughed at that. It was actually a pretty good one. It felt good to laugh. He was still fairly certain he didn't want to face the world, but... he downed what was left of the rum in the cups and then hurried off to the Slytherin common room.

\------------------------

Fortinbras woke Luke with a voluble meow, and Luke gave him a dirty look. "You want food?"

Fortinbras meowed again, and Luke sighed and picked him up. He went to go give the cat some food, and looked at the clock. It was too early to be up, and too late to go back to bed. 

"Damn," Luke said. He went out to the common room and sat and waited for something to happen. His head felt terrible, but that was to be expected. He usually woke with a headache now. This one wasn't much worse than usual, but it was still really obnoxious.

After a while, the door to the second-year dorms opened up and Lennox Finch-Fletchley came out. "Hello, Luke," he said, his precise tones serving to remind Luke, as always, that the boy came from money, and was a bit insufferable about it. "How are you today?"

"Oh, shut up, Lennox," Luke said. "I'm really not in the mood for it."

"Aw, come on, Luke. Not even going to be polite? 'Hello, Lennox. Sorry, but I'm just not feeling very talkative right now.' I mean, really, is it so hard to just say tha--urk."

Luke had swung around, his wand aimed squarely at Finch-Fletchley's face. "I said to shut up."

Lennox swallowed. "I'm sorry, Luke. I didn't... will you bloody put down the wand?"

Luke lowered his wand. "Just leave me alone," he said.

Lennox left him alone. Only Phineas Chenner approached him that morning, and that was only to give him the hangover cure. The night before had been a pleasant break, Luke decided, and he and Teddy would have to do it again, but until then, he was going to be miserable.

\-----------------------

Most of the time, Luke drank with Phineas. He was both more available and certifiably fun, and those were qualities Luke found that he valued quite a bit in a drinking buddy. Teddy was also certifiably fun, but he tended to talk about Important Things, capital-I-capital-T, which wasn't exactly what Luke wanted to do. If he was drinking, he wanted to do it to be happy and stupid, not morose and talking about Important Things.

Still, he scheduled a day with Teddy on his next Hogsmeade weekend, and he started making his decision about Duelling Club.

He should have known better. When Duelling Club day arrived, Luke was hiding in the common room. He didn't want to deal with that much sociability, and the only reason he wasn't taking the opportunity to get plastered was that Teddy would find him and Phineas was at the meeting and wouldn't be there to serve him any drinks. So Luke was curled up on an overstuffed armchair, with the Silmarillion in his hands when the door opened up and a voice said "Thanks, Lennox." Luke looked up. Ryan Pelter was just coming in the door, and Lennox Finch-Fletchley was turning around and heading off, presumably to go back to the meeting.

Luke turned his attention back to his book.

"Evening, Luke," Teddy said.

Luke groaned. "Using your superpower is cheating. I suppose you're here to try to drag me to Duelling Club."

Teddy nodded. "I'd like to do this peacefully."

Luke set his book down and stood up. "Let me go get into some better clothes for it," he said. He went off to the dormitory, let the door close behind him, and then turned and aimed his wand at the door. "Colloportus," he muttered. The door sealed itself with a soft, vaguely gross noise, and Luke went over to his bed and laid down, petting Fortinbras absently.

He was just starting to wonder how long Teddy was going to take to figure it out when Teddy started pounding on the door. "I heard that, Luke! You sealed this door! Open it up, you're not getting out of this."

Luke squeezed his eyes shut. "God Dammit, Teddy," he grumbled, "I just don't want to." Out loud, he said, "Go away!"

The door made the reverse version of the sound that had sealed it, and Teddy stepped inside. "This is for your own good, Luke. If I have to stun you and drag you after me, I will, but I really don't want to."

Luke grabbed his pillow, gripped his wand, and rolled, wand aimed at the pillow. He let go just as he snapped "Depulso!"

The pillow whipped across the space between Luke and Teddy and knocked Teddy over. Teddy's wand came out, but Luke already had his wand pointed at Teddy, his aim rock steady.

"Don't," Luke said.

Teddy stared at him. "Did you really just--"

"Just leave me alone!" Luke shouted.

"Dammit Luke!" Teddy shouted. "You're alienating all of your friends! We're worried about you, but if you keep going like this, pretty soon we won't be your friends anymore. We'll just be people you know, because you can't be friends with someone you never actually talk to!"

Luke's wand faltered a little. "I just don't want to--"

"But you have to go," Teddy said. "You have to do it. You have to let me help you. You're withdrawing, Luke. Please, don't do this to yourself."

Luke let his wand drop. "I'll go," he said. "But I'm probably not going to do any duelling."

"Luke," Teddy said.

Luke sighed. "All right. Fine. Lead on." He held out his hand, and Teddy grabbed it. Luke hauled him to his feet, and as they emerged from the dormitory, a fifth-year girl gave them a strange look. It occurred to Luke after a few moments that she probably thought they'd gotten up to something other than just a tense conversation. He didn't pay any attention to it. She could think what she wanted to think.

Teddy led the way up to the Great Hall, and Luke followed, silently.

It was packed, as usual, for Duelling Club. People were just starting to pair off. Marissa ran up to Luke as soon as she spotted him, and Luke took a deep breath and hugged her. 

"Hi, Marissa. I suppose you want a duel?"

She nodded, and Luke sighed. "I expect I'll have to try and enjoy it then."

Marissa grinned. She led the way over to the duelling mats. "Take that one," she said. Luke stepped onto the mat in question, and Marissa suddenly turned serious. "Standard rules, standard lines?"

Luke nodded and his wand came into the ready position. Professor Shelly was standing up in front of everyone on the big stage that served as the exhibition arena and the podium from which she could address everyone at once. "Everyone ready!" she called out happily. "Bow to your partners!" Luke bowed to Marissa. He caught a glimpse of Teddy bowing to Violet, and various other people bowing all around him, which was actually a bit disorienting. He stood up straight with his wand pointed at Marissa. Professor Shelly liked to play with the starts of meetings like this, waiting for everyone to get good and tensed up before she let them start. She had once overdone it, and had to put down a real, honest-to-goodness fight. This time, though, she didn't. "Duel!" she cried out, and spells were flung around the room, kept in readiness specifically for this moment.

Luke launched his own spell with a minimal flourish, swinging his wand and ducking under Marissa's stunner as he yelled "Tarantellegra!"

There was a bright green flash and Marissa's legs began going uncontrollably. She tried to back away, but she had no control over her own motions, and only managed to flop herself onto her back, point her wand at her legs, and snap "Finite!" She rolled, avoiding a stunner from Luke, then brought her wand around and yelled "Anapneo!"

Luke found all the air forced out of his lungs. Abruptly winded, he hit the ground and cast a rebondi charm, just in time to reflect Marissa's stunner, but as startled and unsettled as he was, it didn't go back at her, heading off to the left, instead. 

"Confundo!" Luke snapped, followed abruptly by "Asi!" Marissa took both spells very directly. The effect of the first made her try to lean backwards against the wind from the second, which ended with a rather spectacular fall. Luke got to his feet and snapped off a stunner while she was still disoriented, and that was that.

He revived Marissa, and she shook her head a couple of times. "What's going on?"

"Oh, right," Luke said. "Finite."

Marissa blinked and coughed once or twice. "All right, well done. Go again?"

Luke nodded. He looked over to where Teddy and Violet were duelling. Violet had already finished wiping the floor with Teddy, and was just helping him up.

Luke smiled at Marissa. "All right, if I admit I'm starting to have fun, you're not going to tell anyone, are you?"

"Of course, not," Marissa said, making a cross-my-heart gesture. "I'd sooner join the Death Eaters for a round of Parcheesi."

They took up their positions again, and bowed, and Marissa snapped out a quick spell that brought up a tiny-but-effetive screen of vines in front of her for just long enough that she could chant out "Oconomo pono esiki manaasa cempati!"

Luke's eyes went wide. He had no idea when Marissa had learned the spirit-cat spell, but suddenly she was a force to be reckoned with. As her vines went down, the two cats--smaller and less developed than the ones Professor Shelly could summon, but still a viable threat--rushed around them, sleek black forms that rushed towards him. 

"Protego!" Luke shouted, and one of the cats slammed headlong into his shield. He felt his arm jerk back against his side, jamming his elbow into his rib, and then he rolled away and snapped "Bombarda!" in the general direction of the cats, making sure to hit the floor. As it turned out, the shot was actually fairly direct, and one of the cats went down, which was a fine consolation for him when he woke up from Marissa's stunner.

She helped him up. "Sorry about stringing you along like that," she said, "but you should have seen the look on your face. Do you want me to teach you how to do the spell? Professor Shelly showed me last time, and I've been practicing, and I wanted to show off a bit, I suppose."

Luke grinned. "All right, Marissa. I suppose you've earned the right to show off a bit. Teach me."

She smiled and started in on a complex little dance, showing Luke where to put his feet and in what ways to move his arms.

They spent the rest of the meeting working on it.

\--------------------------

"You seemed to enjoy yourself," Teddy said cheerfully as they walked out of the Great Hall. 

"I'll admit that I had a little bit of fun," Luke said, "but I'm honestly not sure what else you expected. It's Duelling Club. You have fun in Duelling Club."

"Are you going to rejoin the world now?" Teddy asked.

Luke heaved a sigh, casting a sidelong glare at Teddy. "I'll try. But I make no promises, Teddy. In case you haven't noticed, I've been feeling a bit hurt lately."

"My best friend and prospective newest family member recently drew a wand on me with a real and obvious intention to hex me until my ears popped off." Teddy's whole appearance had shifted. Suddenly, he was his "normal" ginger-haired self, with sharp chin and narrow mouth, nose that he didn't really like because it made him look sort of beaky, startling green eyes, not handsome, but not bad-looking either, and all the more jarring to see because Teddy never looked like himself, he was always too busy playing with his abilities. "If you don't think I'm a little hurt, you're completely thoughtless," he said.

Luke winced. "I'm sorry, Teddy. I didn't mean to... you know..."

"Turn into a colossal arse?"

"Yeah." Luke couldn't meet his friend's eyes, he stared, instead, at the floor between them. "I really, really am sorry. Can you forgive me?"

"Well, yeah," Teddy said, "But only because it's you." When Luke looked up, Teddy was smiling, and the smile was still on that face that was really, genuinely Teddy's. "We've got to go to our common rooms, or we'll be breaking curfew. Unless you want to go and have a drink?"

Luke nodded, and he and Teddy went off to get themselves nice and drunk.

\--------------------------

The next month or so was actually almost happy. Luke and Teddy spent their Hogsmeade weekends drinking at the Hog's Head, and if Luke always came back drunker than Teddy, well, that was just the way it was. They stayed up until curfew, and after curfew, they caroused, and they gallivanted, and they generally did the sort of things that fill adults with disapproval entirely on the grounds that those adults are no longer capable of doing them.

The winter slowly retreated from the encroaching spring, the Hogwarts grounds going from snowbound to waterlogged surprisingly early this year. By early February, there had already been two melts.

Luke found himself dreading the fourteenth. The previous year, it had been horrendous because it was a year to the day since everyone found out about the fragment of Tom Riddle's soul that he harbored. The year before that, it had been ruined, of course, by that same event, in which he had seen his friends attacked, completely lost control of himself, and cast the unforgivable, unforgivably painful cruciatas curse of Heironymus Runel.

This year, it was dually ruined. He and Mark could have been together on Valentine's Day, perhaps they could even have gone a little further than they had before, but now that wasn't going to happen, and as much as Luke wanted to spend the entire day getting stone drunk, he couldn't, because it was a Tuesday.

So he skived off.

He had ordered a skiving snackbox from Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. They came in ten packs, with all manner of effects. Luke wanted something fairly spectacular, which, unfortunately, meant vomit. He had taken the thing first thing in the morning, and Madam Pomfrey declared him unfit for school and sent him back to the common room. On the way, Luke took the antidote to the pastille, and he slipped back into the common room.

He didn't remember much about the rest of the day, besides spending most of it in the little bar behind the painting of the drunk wizard. Phineas had to tell him how many bottles he needed to buy afterwards, and the number left him precisely halfway between worried and proud. He had to get the money together for them, but he had manged to drink more than a couple of bottles dry. 

He didn't get quite that drunk for a good while after that, but he and Teddy were starting to gain a reputation.

Professor Leiman was giving Luke worried looks in Potions lessons, and every day, Luke expected to be told to come in after class for a chat. If there was a teacher who could shut him down completely, it was Professor Leiman. The man was, after all, an ex-spy. Luke had the impression that Professor Leiman was basically like a magical James-Bond-superspy, and retirement had no more dulled his instincts than age had. Leiman could stop Luke from drinking, because with just a little more effort than that would take, he could stop Luke from using doors, or any number of other ubiquitous activities.

So, Luke dreaded what seemed like an inevitable call into Professor Leiman's office, but it didn't come, and naturally, he was so busy dreading one thing that he didn't even see the other thing that was happening much closer to him.

On the third day of March, a Hogsmeade Saturday, Teddy canceled their plans for the usual visit to the Hog's Head.

"I've got to go with Violet to Madam Puddifoot's or the Three Broomsticks or something," he protested irritably. "I don't see why. She's got me all the time, but you only really get me at the Hog's Head. Or, I mean, you only really get me by myself at the Hog's Head."

"I'll manage," Luke said. "I think I know how to drink by now."

Teddy winked at him, and Luke headed off to the Hog's Head. He took his usual seat, and as usual, the dusty old barman was there in his own good time. Luke ordered a firewhiskey. The barman brought it to him, and Luke started up the slow process of getting completely tanked. After about half an hour, Harry Martins sat down across from Luke. He was a fourth year, and as one of the beaters on the Gryffindor quidditch team, he was built like the sort of footballer who gets a lot of red cards for injuring other players, with a lot of hard muscle and not a wasted ounce on his body (except for his hair, which was very long this year, and which he kept dyeing a different color every Hogsmeade weekend). He was also fairly handsome, and Luke found himself eyeing the bigger boy, wondering if maybe his reason for sitting was more intimate and less companionable.  
"Hi Harry," Luke said, forcing a little more control into his voice than the firewhiskey should have allowed. "Can I help you?"

Harry smiled at him, and for a moment, Luke really hoped.

"You really have been drinking," Harry said. "You know, I don't think there's anything wrong with it. The Weasley Twins, you know, they used to sneak in big bottles of Ogden's Old by hiding them on Slytherins, or at least, that's what I heard."

Luke raised an eyebrow. The urge to ask if this was going somewhere was very strong, and he was only stopped by the certain knowledge that it would be rude.

Harry indulged Luke's curiosity soon enough, though. "You know, Violet is having it out with Teddy right now. Says he's being really immature, oughtn't to let you drink as much as you do, blah blah, on and on and on. She sounded really steamed when I left the Three Broomsticks. I thought you ought to know."

Luke blinked. That wasn't what he'd expected to hear. "She's angry at him?"

Harry nodded and, as the barman came around, he muttered his order. Luke ordered another firewhiskey, and Harry continued on. "Really mad. You might be helping your friend get over his girl pretty soon. It only seems fair to give you a little bit of a heads up."

Luke tossed back the rest of the firewhiskey he was already working on just as the other two drinks arrived. The barman took the empty glass.

"I'll see you around, Luke," Harry said, and with that, he got up and walked off.

Luke looked around. He really would have preferred for Harry to sit down and try to seduce him, partially because "try" was a word that would have been inserted merely for the sake of politeness. He was just getting around to looking for someone to try his luck with when Teddy sat down. His eyes were hard and angry, and he must have come through the tavern by way of the bar because he already had a drink in his hand. 

"Hello, Luke," Teddy said, tossing back significantly more of the drink in one swallow than was entirely wise or at all normal for him.

"Oh no," Luke said.

Teddy's lips drew into a thin line. "Violet's split up with me," he said. "She said I was hurting you."

"Hurting me?" Luke said. "That's completely ridiculous."

"Not according to Violet. According to Violet--" and his voice oozed his displeasure every time he uttered that phrase-- "you have a problem. According to Violet, you're going to overdo it too much some day, and you'll get yourself killed. According to Violet, I ought to be nailing you to the bloody wall to stop you drinking." He tossed back a bit more of his drink. It was vanishing with un-Teddylike alacrity. "And me still virgin enough I want to scream. What's it like not being a virgin, Luke?"

Luke grimaced. "We never did everything, Teddy. We did a lot, but not... you know, the important bit."

"Oh perfect," Teddy said. His face turned into a perfect face for being angry, with sharply angled eyebrows and drawn, tight features, his hair a dark, angry red. "So here we are, nothing to do but drink ourselves stupid, just a couple of losers."

Luke drank to that.

\------------------------

If they were a couple of losers, then they were a couple of losers who had a lot of fun. Granted, their grades suffered, and the only one who was willing to call either of them a friend--a real, honest-to-god friend--was Marissa, but Luke and Teddy made it a point to notice that, and most of what went on around them, as little as possible. They never said so in so many words, but the assumption was there, under the slurred laughter and the rude speeches in lonely rooms about people who weren't them.

The weather outside grew to match Luke's mood, slushy, then muddy, rainy and wet. At the end of March, Professor Gills asked Luke to come to his office after classes, and Luke arrived just barely on time. 

"Sit down, Luke," Professor Gills said.

Luke took a seat. There was a portrait of Severus Snape, possibly the most famous head of Slytherin since Slytherin himself, on the wall behind Gills. The sallow, greasy man in the portrait was a direct contrast to Kevin Gills, whose handsome face spoke of being in the front row of every group photo he'd ever been in, whose light brown hair and smooth jawline suggested that he ought to be up on a stage breaking the hearts of housewives, instead of in front of a classroom, playing spokesman for the Hogwarts house with the most brutally shredded reputation. 

"Luke," the handsome Slytherin head began, "I'm concerned about you. I'm beginning to suspect that your friend Teddy is a bad influence on you."

Luke very nearly stood up and walked out right then and there. It wouldn't be the first time he had done so, although doing so without preamble would have made it the rudest ocassion thus far. Instead, he simply frowned at Professor Gills. "Teddy isn't a bad influence on me, Professor. I'd really prefer if you didn't go insulting my best friend, you know."  
"Luke," Professor Gills insisted, "I know that you're a bright boy, but since you and Mister Lupin began--and forgive me for bringing this up, but if word of it has even come to me, then it may be becoming a problem--began your regular visits to the Hog's Head, your performance in the classroom has fallen off rather alarmingly. Mister Lupin, however, has been doing nearly as well as before. Luke, if he is encouraging you--and once again, I must ask you to forgive me--to drink more than he does, then he is most likely--"

"Professor Gills," Luke said abruptly, "I'd like to leave now."

"Luke, stay where you are." Professor Gills' face had gone hard and uninviting. "I do not take kindly to my students being distracted and used for entertainment by people who calls themselves friends. I really believe that, at the very least, you should speak to Mister Lupin about this. Put your foot down, Luke. Tell him there will be no more evenings at the Hog's Head, at least until your performance has improved."

"I'm not going to do that," Luke said evenly, his voice calm despite the intense urge to stand up and start swearing at the charms instructor. "I don't stop hanging around with my friends just because one of my teachers doesn't like the marks I've been getting lately. I really don't think there's anything more to be said in this conversation, Professor." He stood up. 

Professor Gills looked very unhappy, but he made no protest, and Luke left the Slytherin Head's office, barely managing to not slam the door behind him.  
Teddy was waiting for him just down the hall. The two of them had had to get three other people to spill their drinks on themselves at breakfast, but they'd managed it, and the result was that the swear-chair room could be found. They slipped into it, and got out the teacups. Luke couldn't remember the last time they'd actually put tea in them, but he didn't much care, either.

"So what did Goody-Two-Shoes want?" Teddy asked as he filled a couple of cups with water.

"He wanted me to stop spending time with you," Luke said, taking a cup and starting to transfigure its contents. "Not bloody likely. You're my best friend, and you might as well be my brother, too, at this point."

"About that," Teddy said. "Have you decided whether or not you're going to take Gran's offer?"

"I really don't know," Luke said. He pulled his wand out of the cup and sipped. Rum, and fairly decent at that, although nowhere near as good as he could have bought. "I mean, it's a big decision, isn't it? I've got a lot of things to consider. Would it be disrespectful to my mother and father? Would I be all right with being, you know, technically your uncle? There's a lot to think about."

"I want you to do it," Teddy said. "You might not be really my brother if you did, but you'd be at least sort of like my brother, and I'd be really happy to have a brother, especially one that I know I get along with as well as you."

That made a certain amount of sense. Teddy had grown up without any siblings, and while someone who grew up with all manner of brothers and sisters everywhere at all times might want desperately to be an only child sometimes, the opposite, Luke knew from experience, was true for only children. It's human nature, after all, to want what one does not have.

"I know," Luke said, "but it's not just me, and it's not just you. I've got a lot to think about."

A few days later, Mark had another incident in Divinations. He didn't spit out a prophecy this time. It was subtler than that. He started responding to things his table partner said before the other boy got around to saying them. The Ravenclaw boy he was sitting with gradually grew more irritated and confused, and started yelling at Mark, until Professor Trelawney took Mark out of the room.

Luke couldn't help thinking that he would have figured out what was happening and been able to help, instead of getting angry and looking like a fool in front of everyone. The whole thing put Luke in an incredibly foul mood, and he hurried off to get drunk with Teddy after classes. When they headed off to their common rooms around curfew, Luke said goodbye to Teddy with a quick hug and started off on his usual route, only slightly unsteady on his feet. 

He passed by the Great Hall and swung a left, headed to the dungeons, and as he passed by the Hufflepuff corridor, he heard voices. If Luke had been sober, he would have ignored it, but he wasn't. He reined himself in, moving quietly now that he was actually trying to do so, and padded to the nearest corner. Luke peeked around the corner, and there was the source of the voices.

Mark was talking to a boy in Ravenclaw robes, not his table partner from Divinations, but a taller, more athletic boy, albeit a very spotty one. Luke recognized, after a moment or two, one of the fourth years, Aaron something-or-other. Luke thought it started with an r, but he couldn't be sure.

Mark was laughing, and he gave Aaron a winning smile and said "thanks for the help, anyways. Leiman's at least nice about it."

"Yeah," Aaron said. "Leiman's actually a good teacher. Better than Gills."

"Everyone's better than Gills," Mark replied cheerfully. "Professor Binns is better than Gills."

Aaron chuckled, and then his face went serious. "Now what's this I hear about you having another little episode in Divinations?"

"It was nothing horrible," Mark said. "I just got a little... you know, stuck in the future."

"Mark," Aaron said, "I worry about you. I mean, there's obviously something a bit wrong, anyways, if you're so good at Divination. I mean, well, you told me. You're a squib. Squibs aren't exactly known for being good at any kind of magic, to say nothing of something as involved as Divinations."

Mark shrugged. "For all I know, it's what the pendant is supposed to do for me. I can't take it off, though. Going around, seeing Hogwarts the same way old Filch does? That would be horrible."

Aaron sighed. "Can't you just take it off in Divination lessons, then?"

"Right up until I have to use my wand," Mark said. "Stop worrying, Aaron. I'll be fine. You know I'm tougher than I look."

Aaron smiled broadly. "Yeah," he said. He leaned down and planted a kiss on Mark's lips. It obviously wasn't the first time he'd done it.

Luke blinked a couple of times. His vision was blurred, and he couldn't imagine why until the tears started running down his cheeks. 

As Mark and Aaron talked in low voices--somewhere in the back of his mind, Luke noted that they sounded like they might have been doing this for a while--Luke turned and made as quick and quiet an exit as he could. When he got to the Slytherin common room, Marissa jumped up from the big squashy armchair she had been sitting in and rushed over to him. "Luke!" she exclaimed. "What's wrong?"

Luke brushed past her and into the dormitory for the third year boys.

\-----------------------

"What do you know about Aaron... um... Aaron what's-his-name, in fourth year?" Luke's question was fired off the moment Teddy sat down for breakfast, and Teddy gave him a blank look for a moment before his brain finished switching from about-to-enjoy-breakfast to answering-questions-from-nowhere.

"Well, he's sort of a spotty git, bit of a know-it-all," Teddy said. "Muggle-born, one of the youngest in fourth year, everyone was going on about him and one of the Slytherin fifth years a couple of months ago, but I try not to listen to gossip."

"What did he and the Slytherin do? Which Slytherin?"

"Melanie Jugson," Marissa supplied. "They got caught with their pants down."

Luke's head thudded to the table. "Of course. Of course that's what happened."

"Why?" Teddy asked.

Luke looked around. Mark and Aaron were sitting at a table a good ways off, with a few tables in between them and the severely diminished League. Luke pointed. 

Teddy and Marissa both peered off curiously in the direction Luke had pointed. Marissa was the first to figure it out.

"Oh, no," she said. "When did you find out?"

"What are you talking about?" Teddy said.

Marissa pointed, her finger lining up a little more easily than Luke's had, and Teddy's face fell. "Oh. Well."

Marissa stood up and walked around the table to sit next to Luke. She put her arm over his shoulder. "It's going to be all right," she said. Teddy pushed her food across the table to her. "Thanks, Teddy. Luke, you knew he had to move on eventually. It was bound to happen. I know it's hard to have to see it, and it probably seems like he's done it awfully fast, but it had to happen. You can't expect him to be yours or nobody's."

"How did you find out?" Teddy asked.

Luke took a deep breath. "I saw them in the hall on the way back to the common room last night. I think Aaron helped him with his potions work, and that's... you know, how it started."

Teddy sighed. "Don't think about it too much, Luke. You'll just wind up obsessing pointlessly."

Luke almost--almost--objected to Teddy's suggestion, but he couldn't really see a way to argue with it. He was already starting to worry at the thought of Mark and Aaron being together, hating every moment that he thought about it, and unable to stop.

Luke stood up and wandered away, and Teddy jumped up and followed after him.

"Where are you going?" Teddy asked.

"Where do you think?" Luke said.

\------------------------

The last Hogsmeade weekend found Luke hiding in a corner in the Hog's Head, brooding.

Time had not bought him perspective or enlightenment. It had not shown him the solutions to his problems, and it had not made him happier. The months since he first learned that Mark had moved on had left him just as depressed as before, they had merely trained him to avoid being called out by the teachers, to avoid unwanted therapy sessions.

Luke wanted to cry, but he didn't want to water down his drink.

"Hello, Luke."

Luke looked up. Professor Leiman pulled back the chair across from him, draping his suit coat over the back of it. His customary tie followed the jacket, and as he took a seat, the barman put a drink in his hand. "Thank you, Aberforth," Professor Leiman said.

The old man nodded and made a discreet exit.

"You know, sir," Luke said, "Usually when someone is sitting in a dark corner of a seedy tavern, they want to be left alone."

"They're also usually busy getting stone drunk," Leiman said, sipping his drink. "Given that you've only just turned fourteen this month, that seems like a bad thing to me."

"You didn't seem to have a problem with it when I was thirteen," Luke said.

Professor Leiman winced. When he spoke again, the mild edge of gruffness that usually colored his voice was gone, replaced by a regretful tone. "No, I didn't. But I think maybe I should have. I caused this problem for you, Luke."

"You didn't do anything, Professor," Luke said. "I drink to keep from having nightmares." Professor Leiman raised an eyebrow, and Luke continued, "almost every night, if I don't go to bed completely hammered, I dream... I dream the things Voldemort did. I dreamed a time he told someone to committ a rape. I dreamed a time he murdered someone who took care of him when he was a child. I dreamed a time he burned down an orphanage, killed his father, discovered the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets. Do you know how to make a horcrux, Professor? I do. It's nauseating. I don't drink because you gave me a drink, I drink because that way, I don't dream."

"Then why are you here now?" Professor Leiman asked.

Luke glared at him. "Because my boyfriend left me and immediately went after another boy, my best friend lost his girlfriend because she doesn't like what we do for fun, and I'm bloody depressed."

Professor Leiman leaned back in his chair and looked thoughtful, then he spoke again, roughly, almost angrily. "Hell, Luke, that's all? I'm a divorcee, a former government-employed killer, and a washed up spy. I've seen things that would shock you to your core. I've done things that would shock you to your core. You want a reason to drink? Join the army and go through half of what I did. I've been to war, Luke. I've been in Vietnam, I've been in Soviet Russia, I fought in the Battle of Hogwarts. By your little scale, I ought to have drowned myself in grain alcohol years ago."

"Did you watch your own mother die at your hands?" Luke asked.

Professor Leiman's unshakeable calm broke. It was a subtle thing. His face paled slightly, his eyes became a tiny, tiny bit haunted. "Luke, I'm sorry," he said, softly, once more. "But if you let that one moment control your life, you're never going to be happy again."

"I don't want to be happy right now," Luke said.

Professor Leiman swallowed, and he stood up and walked away, grabbing his jacket and tie.

Luke sighed and took another swallow of his drink. 

He didn't want to be happy, but he didn't want to be bored, either. He started looking around for something to do.

Something besides drink, that is. He downed what was left of his rum and cola, then stood up and started through the bar, following a steady course to a girl he'd been watching for a while. She was a Gryffindor, a fourth year, and the odds were against him, but he had had just enough to drink, and she was just pretty enough, that he thought he might as well try.

"Hello," Luke said.

Selene Brrwyn smiled for a moment, and then her smile faded as she saw who she was talking to. "Restimen," she said. Luke sighed. With a tone like that in her voice, he might as well go back to drinking. He tapped on the bar, and the barman--Aberforth--brought him another glass without either of them having to say a word.

\-------------------------

Luke woke up hungover, with Fortinbras kneading his side, mewling to be fed. 

Sunday. He stayed in the common room all day, thinking, and hating it. Marissa sat by his side, reading one of his books, a Terry Pratchett piece. 

The thing was that Professor Leiman was right. If Luke let his life be dominated by these dreams, by the memory of his mother's death, he couldn't be happy. How could he even pretend to be happy? 

But how could he face the dreams, the memories, the pain? Every night, a new horror? He couldn't accept it, couldn't do it, couldn't even begin to contemplate it. Eventually, Luke leaned on Marissa's shoulder, and she put the book down. "Is something wrong?" she asked.

Luke nodded, and Marissa seemed for a moment like she was about to ask what it was, but then she seemed to think better of it. She just wrapped an arm around his shoulders and waited for him to speak.

"Am I a drunk?" he asked softly after a few minutes. "I mean, really. Do you agree with Mark and Violet?"

Marissa stared for a moment, her eyes as wide as saucers. Finally, after an agonizing silence, she replied, "well, you certainly take it a bit far sometimes. I'm not sure I would call you a drunk, but... you need to stop drinking as much as you do."

Luke swallowed. Usually, he liked to think that introspection came fairly easy to him, a sort of exploration of his inner world, but he was deathly afraid to explore that frontier now, filled with a terrifying certainty that he would learn something truly shameful, learn that he had earned the loss of Mark, that he had spent the last year acting like...

He swallowed and pulled himself out of Marissa's grasp. She watched him go without a comment, and Luke made his silent way out of the Slytherin common room. His feet carried him around without his really thinking about where he was going, but he found himself treading familiar ground before too long.

Luke turned off of the path he was following, and went up to the sixth floor, but there was nothing there, and soon he was going down again, following the well-worn path to the tiny little bar behind the painting of the drunk wizard. He gave in, and arrived at the painting. He stared at it. The man in the painting looked up at him through bleary eyes.

Luke looked away. "Let me in, you old fraud," he said.

The painting swung open, and Luke stepped inside. Phineas, Eloise, and, to Luke's mild surprise, Selene Brrwyn sat at the little bar. Selene turned slightly drunk eyes on him. Luke climbed up to one of the tall chairs that served as barstools, and Phineas poured him a drink without asking.

Selene turned to him. "I thought I might see you in here," she said. "I guess I owe you an apology."

Luke blinked. This was completely unexpected. "An apology?"

Selene nodded. "I was talking to Violet after I got back from Hogsmeade, and, well, she pointed out that I might have been sort of a royal bitch to you. So I'm sorry. I shouldn't have been rude to you at the Hog's Head."

Luke forced a smile and pulled at his drink, because it was there. "Well, thanks. I mean, it's more important to recognize when you've fouled up than never to foul up at all, right?"

"I like that," she said. "Lets me do stupid things once in a while."

Luke hoped his laugh didn't sound too artificial. "Doing stupid things is one of those great joys in life, isn't it?"

Selene raised her glass, and Luke clinked his own mismatched glass against it. "To being bloody stupid," Selene said.

Luke downed a good portion of his drink to that, and he turned to talk to Eloise. 

She was snogging Phineas. 

Luke turned back to Selene, quirked an eyebrow up, and jammed a thumb over his shoulder, casting a sardonic little smile at Selene. She winked.

Luke shrugged and kept drinking, and Selene followed his lead. As soon as his drink was done, Luke leaned over the bar and pulled down a bottle of rum. He poured enough to get quite drunk into his and Selene's glasses, and they shared the rum. By the bottoms of their glasses, they were both laughing.

"You know," Selene said, "I have no idea why I was so rude to you. You're actually pretty all right."

Luke grinned at her. "Well, of course I am."

"You know," Selene went on as though he hadn't spoken, "it's probably something to do with the whole Voldemort thing. I know you're not him, but there's been so many rumors." She leaned over and planted a drunken kiss on his cheek. "But you're sweet."

Luke turned to her. He smiled, and somewhere in the back of his mind, he was perfectly aware that the smile he was giving her wasn't nearly as suave and debonair as it felt. "How sweet am I?"

Selene must have been a little more drunk than Luke thought, because in answer, she leaned over and licked his cheek. "You're positively... um..."

"Saccharine?" Luke suggested, stopping his hand halfway through its move to wipe off his face.

"Yeah," Selene said. "That's a good word. Hey Luke. Come with me."

She got down off of her seat and left, and Luke followed her. Selene led him through the castle, in a route that passed through the same corridor going the same direction twice, but wound up in a different place each time, to a mosaic mural of two duelling wizards. The mosaic moved, and the tiles made a soft, constant clacking sound. Selene walked up to the mural, waited for something Luke couldn't begin to fathom, and then slapped the wall. One of the duellists shifted the aim of his wand a bit and the wall opened up, unfolding a bit like the bricked entrance to Diagon Alley.

Inside the room was a shabby old sofa and a few bookshelves. It must have been a study room at one point. Luke would have been completely unsurprised to learn that it had once been somewhere else completely in the castle. Whatever it used to be, though, it clearly didn't serve that purpose anymore. The bookshelves were falling apart, the books half stripped away from them, and the scarred table that might once have sat in front of the sofa was pushed against the wall. It only had three legs.

Selene led Luke to the sofa and pulled him down. He could no more keep his feet than move the room to a more convenient place, and he wound up half-straddling her. She laughed.

Selene was a bit bigger than he was--Luke was pretty well convinced he would be going through a growth spurt soon--and the arrangement seemed to work pretty well. They both laughed at their own drunken clumsiness, but there was really just one thing on their minds, and within a couple of minutes, the laughter had been drowned, replaced by snogging.

Selene took control from the start, and before long, she had Luke stretched out on his back on the sofa. She was just starting to pull his Hogwarts robe off when he swallowed and said, "Selene?"

"Yeah?" she said, still toying with the edge of his robe.

"Would you do this if you weren't drunk?"

She stared at him. "Does it matter?"

"Just answer the question," he said. "Please," he added after a moment's hesitation.

"Well," she said, contemplatively, "I guess... probably not."

\-------------------------

Luke walked into the Slytherin common room with every ounce of dignity he could muster. Marissa looked up and frowned. "Oh, Luke," she said, standing up and walking to him. "You look awful. And you've been drinking. I thought..." she trailed off, and Luke leaned forward and held onto her, burying his face in her shoulder.

"Marissa," he said softly, "I have a problem. I'm really scared, and I hate admitting it, but I have a problem, and I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to be the one that everyone can't stand to be around because I'm just drunk all the time."

Marissa stepped back and held him out at arm's length. "What happened?"

Luke took a deep, steadying breath and looked around the common room. Plenty of people were paying attention. He grabbed Marissa's hand and led her out of the common room, through the corridors to a semi-private little corner. He sank down against the wall, and Marissa settled in next to him.

"I almost had... you know... I almost was with Selene Brrwyn. She was there, and we were both drinking, and we were snogging, and then... I asked her if she'd do it sober, and she said no. So I walked out. I think she's probably mad at me."

Marissa leaned over and put an arm over his shoulders. "You said no to her, though. That's better than if you'd done it. You want to stop?"

Luke shrank down into an even smaller ball than he'd already curled up to. "I can't keep... I have to stop drinking." The last two words came out small and pathetic, like he was afraid to say them too loudly. "I'll dream about Voldemort. I know I will. But I have to stop. I almost made a huge mistake."

Marissa hugged him, not that there was much purchase to be found for a proper hug. He was sure he smelled like rum, but she ignored it, or at least, she made no mention of it. "How can I help you, Luke?" she asked.

"Keep me from drinking," Luke said. "Make me stop. I'll have to talk to Teddy. Tell him we're not going to do it anymore." He sighed. "I'm going to go to bed while I'm still drunk. That way, I won't have to dream about Voldemort." He levered himself to his feet, holding himself up on the wall. Marissa followed him back to the common room, and he hugged her one more time before he went off to the dormitory. Fortinbras mewled a sleepy feline greeting as Luke bedded down for the night, but drifted back to sleep before Luke was even settled.

\------------------------

"So you're really quitting?" Teddy said. "That's it, not a drop?"

Luke nodded.

Teddy shrugged. "I'm going to miss those spirited conversations about really stupid things," Teddy said. He looked around the Great Hall at all the people coming in for breakfast. 

"But maybe I'll be able to get Violet to come back. You think so, Luke?"

Luke looked over at Mark and Aaron, deep in conversation about something. He pursed his lips. "Maybe. You know what we haven't done this year that we really ought to?"

"What's that?" 

"Visit Hagrid," Luke said. "I think we owe him an apology for not stopping by to say hello all year. You want to go and do that after classes today?"

Teddy nodded. His hair turned a sort of sullen, vaguely-ashamed green color. "Yeah. I hope he's not too offended by our not showing up to say hello."

"Hagrid's pretty laid back," Luke said, but he frowned as he said it.

They went through the rest of the day a bit distractedly. Luke couldn't help worrying about what that night was going to be like, what he was going to dream about and how unpleasant it would be. By the time they went down to Hagrid's hut at the end of the day, Luke was agitated and very obviously unhappy, but he walked with Teddy companionably enough, even if he didn't talk much. Teddy knocked on Hagrid's door, and after a few moments, Charlie Weasley opened it up. He peered down at Teddy and grinned. "Hello, Teddy," he said. "You've brought Luke, then? Hagrid was starting to think you two would never show up."

Luke blushed, trying not to look like he was embarassed, and Charlie let them in. 

Luke hadn't seen Hagrid's one-armed apprentice in nearly a year, and he found that a couple inches of extra height on himself helped to make Charlie much less intimidating--not that anything could make him completely non-intimidating. He'd lost the arm to a dragon, and professed to miss the beasts, which, in Luke's opinion, meant that he was a little cracked in the head. Charlie seemed fairly harmless, but Luke had no way to be completely sure.

Hagrid was in the hut, sitting over a big cup of tea, which the half-giant groundskeeper dwarfed completely. There was another cup on the table, and when Hagrid saw Luke and Teddy, he got up and starting pouring tea for them. 

"'Ello, Luke, Teddy," Hagrid said. "I was startin' ter think ye were tryin' ter avoid me."

"Sorry, Hagrid," Luke said. "My weekends have been... you know, really full lately."

Hagrid chuckled and put a cup of tea down in front of Luke as Luke took a seat. "Well, sure enough, they prob'ly ought ter be. It's yer third year, an' that's usually when ye start havin' all sorts o' crazy happen. I remember in my third year, I wen' to Hogsmeade with a couple o' girls from Ravenclaw, an' we didn' get back until it was nearly time fer the firs' class of the next week." He smiled at what sounded like probably one of his most interesting memories.

"Well, we didn't do any of that," Teddy said.

"Actually," Luke said, "I'm trying to have a little less of the sort of fun I've had in Hogsmeade lately. It's not going to be easy." He sipped his tea, and Hagrid frowned at him.

"A little less fun? That doesn' sound like any kind o' fun at all. What's wrong with a little bit o' fun?"

Luke sighed. "The problem is really more the kind of fun I was having," he said. "I was... you know, I was drinking."

"Well, there's nothin' wrong with that, is there?" Hagrid's brow drew into an expression of puzzlement. "It's not exac'ly like nobody should ever drink."

"But I'm a bit too young," Luke said, "and I was doing it too much."

Hagrid's mouth formed a perfect little--well, a perfect, very large--O, and slowly he replied, "Well, if that's what it was, then I s'pose yer right. Is that what yer breakin' up with Mark was about?"

Luke nodded. "Violet thought Teddy was making it worse, so she broke up with him, too. I've been ruining things for my friends, and I didn't even know it. I felt like such a git when I figured it out."

"You didn't ruin anything for me," Teddy said. "You're my best friend, Luke. All right, so I love Violet, but you're practically my brother. I'll help you whatever way I can, and you know it, and if that means I'm going drinking with you... well, you know, I never once objected to it."

"But going drinking with me is what made Violet--"

"Violet is what made Violet split up with me," Teddy said. "Just Violet, and nothing else. If you'd gone after her when Mark left and stolen her from me, that would be different, but you didn't."

Luke made a face at the concept of dating Violet. It sort of seemed like the same rough idea as, for instance, dating one's sister. "I could never go after Violet," he said. "She's sweet, and she's pretty, but it would be just like going after you."

Teddy made almost the same face Luke had made a few moments before. Hagrid laughed. "It's good to have friends like that, ye know," he said. "They're the one's who'll stick with ye, jes' you watch."

"Violet hasn't talked to either of us since she left Teddy," Luke replied.

Hagrid frowned. "Oh. Well, usually that's not how it goes."

\------------------------

The next couple of weeks passed with a dreary slowness Luke could hardly stand. He avoided Phineas like the plague, which was difficult, and he got no more than a few hours of sleep every night.

By the time Luke got onto the Hogwarts Express at the end of the year, he was ragged and miserable, but he was also cold sober, and he had been for weeks.

He wasn't sure whether or not he liked that fact.

Teddy and Marissa walked ahead of him, and Fortinbras rode on Luke's shoulder. Teddy found an empty compartment, and he was just about to slip into it when a voice called out behind them. Luke turned around, and cracked a little smile as Victoire Weasley ran up and past him. She slipped into the compartment, and then Teddy went in, then Marissa, and finally Luke. Teddy was already pulling out his Scrabble board.

"So, Victoire," Teddy said, "have you ever played Scrabble?" She shook her head shyly."All right," Teddy said, "then you can play with Marissa. She'll show you how, and then you can be your own team next game."

"You're adding her to the League," Luke said, "aren't you?"

"She's a Gryffindor," Teddy said. "All we need now is a Hufflepuff."

Victoire and Marissa started working together. Teddy won very handily, with Luke coming in at second place, and the second game had similar results. They all sat together, playing their board game, and talking about school, and Duelling Club, and Professor Leiman, and Hogsmeade, and all sorts of strange, familiar things. Finally, they arrived at King's Cross Station, and they all piled out. Luke couldn't help smiling when Victoire startled Teddy by saying goodbye with a kiss on his cheek, and then he got a surprise of his own in the form of an identical goodbye from Marissa.

"Try to be all right," Marissa said. "You're my friend, Luke. Be all right, for me. Okay?"

Luke smiled at her and pulled her into a hug. Fortinbras meowed a little protest from his shoulder, and Marissa mumbled, "quit complaining, Fort."

Marissa hurried off to her mother, and Luke looked around. Andromeda was just emerging from the crowd to collect her charges, and Luke walked up to her. "Andromeda," he said nervously.

"Luke," she said.

He took a deep breath. "If your offer still stands, I think I'd like to take you up on it. I'd be honored to be a part of your family."

Behind him, Teddy let out a whoop and, from the sound of it, jumped into the air in celebration. Andromeda pulled Luke into a tight embrace. "Of course that offer still stands. We'll get it taken care of this summer. Don't you worry about a thing, Luke."

\----------------------

"Aw, lookit the little Riddle, tripped on his own little Riddle feet!"

He turned and cast the darkest glare he could at the bully who'd tripped him. Dumbledore had promised him that Hogwarts would be different, but this was worse. At the orphanage, he'd been the only one with power. Here, everyone more than a year or two above him could bully him with ease. 

"Oi! Lay off, Burke!"

Burke flinched back from the oncoming form of the Gryffindor student who had just come to rescue the poor, defenseless Slytherin. Typical Gryffindor. See something to rescue, rescue it. The girl chased Burke off with a few well-aimed insults, and then she turned and extended a hand.

"You need help?"

He stuck out his hand and let her pull him up. "Thanks," he muttered, barely wanting to acknowledge that she'd helped him. A deft wave of her wand collected his fallen things and sent them back into his arms.

"I'm Amelia," she said. "If those boys give you any more trouble, you just come and get me, and I'll set them right for you, right? Nobody needs to be bullied." She cracked a wide smile, and he hesitated, and then he smiled back at her. Maybe there were a few good things about Hogwarts, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's as far as it is as of this posting. Check back in November for more; there should be updates nearly every day that month.


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